Fulfillment - Or: When Teddie Started Living
by Nenilein
Summary: Left behind alone in the TV-World after the battle with his Shadow, Teddie wishes for nothing more than to really "belong" with his friends. He doesn't realize that he is on the best way to become as close to this dream as one could be. A closer look at Teddie's life in Inaba, no Pairings.
1. Can and Can't

**Author's Note:**

_A Perspective Switch of the second half of P4 from Teddie's view, which elaborates on him gaining his human body, his relationships to his friends, his wants and ever-present fears and his life in the human world as a seemingly normal boy staying with the Hanamura family._

_This was written on a whim and will probably end up being sort of a One-Shot collection starting Chapter 3, telling random stories out of Teddie's new daily life._

_((Oh, and for anyone disappointed I haven't updated 'Complete Turnabout' lately; I am sorry. Responsibilities and Impulses are getting in the way. I promise, I will get back to it soon.)) _

_**That said, I hope you'll all enjoy this little tribute to my favorite P4 Character! Bear-Hug~!**_

* * *

The first signs that it was happening came pretty soon. It was right after the others had left again.

He was watching them, when they headed for the screens of the Exit TVs that he had set up for them with the bit of power he had been able to muster. Kanji, Chie, and Yukiko turned for him before leaving, exchanging worried glances, and even Yosuke gave him a "Take care," before he left. Rise left him with the promise she would come to visit. However, the one who stayed longest to bid him a "See ya soon," was the one he called "Sensei." He ruffled the charred fur of the bear with a smile before he got up on his way to join the others. And the bear smiled back. As if everything was alright. As if he didn't mind that he'd been quite literally flattened, burned and maybe even crushed. He could heal. He knew he could. Even though he didn't know how he knew.

He had been thinking so much lately, ever since Sensei and Yosuke had first come here, through the TV at that place they always call "Junes." And the more he had been thinking, the more he had come to realize how little he knew and understood, or how much he knew without knowing why. It was strange. The more he learned, the dumber he felt. But sometimes… sometimes he really didn't mind that. Because this wasn't all he felt. There were so many good things he had felt too, ever since people had come to this side. Like what it was like to laugh with others. Or what it was like to have someone care for you. Those were the moments when he really felt fulfilled, as if that, somehow was the only way he had always wanted to be. A wish he just hadn't thought about before, maybe? Possibly. It didn't matter. In the end he had to admit, regardless of what he had said to Sensei and Yosuke in the beginning… the truth was, he was only really happy when he was with them. And that was why he was happy right now as well. Regardless of the burns and the dents.

But then, Sensei turned and he couldn't see his face and smile anymore. He left, just like the others, for the place they called "real". And with that, silence came back and Teddie was alone again. And the fog was dense. And it was cold, because his fur was all burnt off. And the floor was hard. He stared at the exit TV for a while. Longingly. Maybe even with a bit of wonder. Exit TV… Right, he had a Persona now. That's what Sensei had said, right? That they could enter here because they had Personas. Did the Persona allow you to move between the sides? If so, maybe…

_(I can't,)_ he caught himself thinking.

_(Why?)_ he thought back.

_(I can't.)_ The thought came back.

_(But why?)_ He thought again. _(Why can't I?)_

_(I mustn't.) _The thought he couldn't control changed. (_Because I'm not allowed to_.)

_(But they're allowed to. Why not me?)_ he thought back. But no answer was to be found in his mind.

_(Why?)_ He thought again. Nothing. He got angry. He thought harder. _(Why? Why, why, why?)_

But nothing came to him. Nothing new. All he knew was that whenever he gazed at this screen, whenever he even dared to entertain the thought of touching it or just taking a peak outside, it would ring in his mind again. '_I can't_'. He couldn't fight it, but asking '_why'_ didn't bring answers either. Finally, he shook. The anger was still there.

"Stupid head!" he shouted out. "Stop being so unbearably empty!"

And as if to punish his head for not doing what he wanted it to do, he started pounding it with his fists a few times. Once, twice, trice, four times… It didn't change anything, of course. An empty head would remain hollow. Hitting it wouldn't change that. There was nothing to put inside. He stopped. At the end, it was just him and the silence again. And in the short distance, the screen he wasn't allowed to touch. And beneath him the hard floor. And around him the cold fog. He sighed.

"Oh well," he tried to find a bit of resolve, "Whining hasn't helped any bear yet. It's not gonna change a thing. I-I mean! I told Chie-chan and Yuki-chan I was going to get fit and much, much stronger soon! Rise-chan too… What am I doing sitting around here? I got work to do!"

And that said Teddie immediately let his flattened body bounce back onto the floor. It was sit-up time. Sit-up time wouldn't end until he was the strongest bear in the universe. He would show them all his iron will!

"I am… huff… not about…huff… to let waiting ladies… huff… down…!"

Inside, Teddie knew he was mostly kidding. He knew Yukiko or Chie wouldn't want anything from him that way. Probably not Rise either. It was a nice thought, but nothing else. He was cute, yeah. But he was also different. He wasn't like Sensei, or even Yosuke. They were all different from him. That's why he'd never really belong with them… Maybe it was also the reason he couldn't leave here.

_(But… if I was like them…)_ he thought. _(Just a little bit more like them… Maybe I'd belong then.)_

It was a surprisingly nice thought. He kept thinking.

_(Yosuke wouldn't call me empty anymore. The girls would see me differently too. I wonder what Sensei would say…?)_

He kept thinking about it while doing sit-ups. It was a nice dream. But, in the end, just a dream, right? He couldn't change who he was. Then again… who was he? He didn't even really know. He thought like Sensei and the others and he now knew for sure he felt things like them too. So why was it so difficult to be like Sensei and the others? Maybe it wasn't… No, he knew it was. He just knew. Like he just knew that he couldn't leave this place. If he tried he'd just not be able to bring himself to go. If he tried to be like Sensei and the others… It would likely be the same.

And yet, part of him didn't want to give up on it.

* * *

Yukiko came to visit. That was rare. Yukiko seemed always so busy. She said she was working at a place called an "Inn." Apparently, it was hard work. Teddie was impressed and honored such a hard-working beauty like Yuki-chan had come all the far, far way to see him. Of course, Junes was only 3 bus stops from the Inn, but Teddie didn't know that. And even if he had known, he'd still have thought the same about it. He tried to make himself as presentable as possible when Yukiko wasn't looking at the moment. Thankfully, most of his fur had grown back by now. She still caught him brushing it. When she looked at him in a puzzled way, he winked as if to send her a heart of admiration. That was when she got what it was all about and sighed. Teddie didn't let such a minor set-back bring him down. After all, Yuki-chan had come to see him. That meant she cared, right? She had brought presents too, things from the other side, their world, some of which Teddie knew from his side as well, but had never understood the purpose of, others which he had never seen before. Yukiko actually took the time to explain some of it to him.

"Oh… These magazines are from Rise." Yukiko turned around a magazine she found he had been holding the wrong way around. "She thought you might like them, they have some of her pictures… Oh, now that I think about it, can you also read them?"

"Uhm… Bearly… No, wait, I can!" Teddie himself seemed surprised. This was the first time he had even heard that word, "reading", and yet, he instantly knew what it meant and how to do it.

"Oh, so you can read! That's amazing, Teddie! Where did you learn?"

"Well…" Come to think of it, he had "read" things before… small bits of text, like signs or snippets of paper. He had never given it much thought. But now that Yukiko asked, he realized that it _was_ a bit strange. Where _did_ he learn it?

"I… don't know," he finally gave in. He just couldn't remember.

"I see…"

Yukiko sounded a bit disappointed by this answer. Well, he was disappointed too. Why didn't he know why he knew things? This was frustrating! Beary frustrating! What he needed right now were some nice pictures of Rise-chan in a bikini to cheer himself up, yes! Unfortunately, as he kept scrolling he had to realize that there was not a single bikini-clad Rise in this book. was about to quit when one particular picture attracted his attraction.

"Huh?" He took a closer look. "Who's the cub with Rise?"

"Cub… Oh, that's not a child! That's Kichiro Kusaba."

Yukiko was explaining to Teddie the picture he was currently looking at, which was showing Rise, dressed in casual summer clothing smiling like an angel, walking down an unnaturally beautiful meadow hand in hand with a boy. Said boy was shorter than her and had golden, slightly curly hair that reached down to his shoulders. He looked frail, but in a strangely endearing way. Teddie curiously kept eyeing the picture.

"He's an actor… I think he's been in a few movies with Rise. He's quite popular for… uhm, how to say it… his "childlike charms" I guess. Well, he looks that way even though he's a high school senior, so there might be truth to it."

"Childlike charms… So that's a form of "being hot" too?" Teddie asked Yukiko eagerly.

"Well, for some people it is, I guess," she replied hesitantly. Where was Chie when she needed her? This was so awkward to explain without her. Teddie , however, grew more and more enthusiastic.

"So, so, does this mean this Kusa-Bear gets to score with a lot of hot studs?!"

And now, he had hit Yukiko's limits.

"S-Stop it with the scoring already!" her face turned as red as her blouse. With a quick movement, she ripped the magazine out of Teddie's hands and closed it.

"H-Hey!" He tried to get it back, but due to her superior height and arm-length, she could easily get it out of his reach. Curses!

"That was beary important study material!" he whined.

"Sorry Teddie, but I don't know if you should really study… that…" Yukiko was so very flustered. Further, she wondered whatever Rise had been thinking when she told her to bring him that. Then again, it _was_ Rise. "I-I mean… shouldn't you be getting back to your training? I thought it was important to you."

"I-It still is!" Teddie quickly insisted. "And I'll get back to it soon enough! I am just taking a bear-eak!"

"A break? Well, I guess you're probably exhausted…" Yukiko looked sorry for him when she said that. "We all were, after all."

"Actually it's more that I've been kind of 'stiff' lately…" Teddie admitted.

"Stiff…?" Yukiko asked. "In what way? Maybe I could help you with that."

Of course, she couldn't exactly let Teddie bathe in the hot springs back at home, but there might have been one or two things she knew from her mother that she could try… She just wondered if they would work on Teddie the same way as on other people. He wasn't human after all. And he was empty inside too… She often had to remind herself of that fact. It was easy to forget, given how lively he acted.

"Well, I've been feeling sort of heavy. My arms and legs don't move as smoothly as they usually do either. And sometimes I feel really weird sensations in really weird places, but I can't tell where…"

"Huh… That sounds strange. Maybe you are sick?" Yukiko quickly placed her hand on what she believed to be Teddie's forehead. "You don't seem to have a fever, though… But maybe it doesn't work that way for you?"

Yukiko pondered about it for a few moments before sighing,

"I'm sorry, Teddie. I don't think I can help you there…"

"It's alright, Yuki-chan, don't be sad. You tried, and I really appreciate it," he smiled at her, hiding that he actually was a bit disappointed that Yuki-chan didn't know what was wrong with him either. So he was too different for Yuki-chan to even tell if he was sick. Still, he joked, "And even if I was sick, with such a beeeautiful lady like you around, how could I stay sick for long? That would be a bear of a waste!"

"H-Huh…!"

Yukiko wasn't really paying attention to what she did next, she only knew that she didn't like the tone in his voice or the way he looked at her and that she really, really was still rather unhappy about the whole "scoring" thing. Before she knew it, she had suddenly grabbed Teddie's arm. She didn't know what she was planning to do with it. She never got to find out, because the next moment, a sudden wave of wrongness overcame her. Something felt "off," very, very off. It was like a moment of shock and she ended up letting go of the bear's arm. She stumbled back a bit. Processing what had just happened took her a short while.

"T-Teddie…" she stuttered.

"Eh… Yuki…chan?" Teddie himself seemed shocked as well, but that was solely due to Yukiko's own reaction. "What's wrong…?"

Yukiko shook her head a bit, looked at the floor for a moment, apparently in deep confusion, before she spoke up again,

"Teddie… After… what happened in the strip-club…Did you, ehm… put something inside you to inflate yourself again…?"

"…Inside me?" Teddie seemed puzzled. "You mean, like stuffing…?"

"N-No… It was too hard for that…" Yukiko seemed to still be thinking. "I mean, I know you are supposed to have nothing inside. But, when I took your arm just now… For a moment, it felt like something was _in_ there. It felt almost like touching a normal arm… I could feel the bone… I think there was even a pulse…"

"Yuki-chan…"

What was she saying? Something inside him? A "normal" arm? He put nothing inside. But if there was nothing, what had Yuki-chan felt then…? Teddie could really understand why Yukiko was getting worried about this. In fact, he was getting worried now too. However, when Yukiko came walking up to him and took his arm again, as if to confirm it would feel the same again… she just looked puzzled.

"Huh…"

"Huh?" Teddie asked nervously. "Huh, what? What do you feel, Yuki-chan?"

"…Nothing," she said. "It feels like before again… There's nothing inside. Hm… Maybe I _did_ just imagine it…"

Teddie just stared at her. Imagine it? But why would she imagine something like that? Maybe there had really been something! Or maybe he was just being too hopeful… What was he hoping for anyway? Yuki-chan probably really just imagined it. Yeah, that had to be it.

"Nevermind…" she said. "In any case, we should pack these things up again. I'll put them where you want them, so you can use them any time, alright?"

And when Yukiko smiled at him, he had all but forgotten about the strange incident with his arm and proceeded to pack up his presents again.

* * *

"Go, Kintoki-Douji!"

With a quick swing of his fist, Teddie smashed the Arcana that had emerged from within him and caused his Persona to appear. He was getting better at this. The first few times around, he had tried to crush the card in his fist, like Sensei did, but he always missed the timing and had ended up falling over in an embarrassing manner instead, from trying to touch the card when it was still way out of his reach. Good thing the others hadn't seen. Yosuke especially would have had a field day with it. By now, however, Teddie was pretty sure he had found a battle style that fit him.

He wasn't very fast, but he could hit, and he hit hard. Just attach some claws or spikes to a glove and he could show the enemy why bears were dangerous. The instincts were all there… It seemed like he had known how to fight all along, somewhere inside. He had just forgotten. Now that he could make good use of it, though, he wasn't going to forget again so quickly! Not in this bear's lifetime.

Still… the stiffness that had overcome him a while ago was still there and had actually grown even worse. By now, it was getting annoying. He occasionally felt an itch on his inside that he wouldn't even have been able to scratch if he tried and the sudden heaviness and change in balance would overcome him every so often. It was tempting to abandon physical training in this condition and just train his Magic skills, but he knew that he couldn't be that lazy. He had to grow strong to be useful to his friends, after all. Especially with how weak his nose had been lately.

After three hours of target practice, however, Teddie finally couldn't go on anymore. He sunk down to the floor and sighed, as Kintoki-Douji returned to his Arcana.

"…I'm one beat bear," he sighed. "I guess I'll call it a day…"

With that, he laid down where he had sat and just stared into the air, gazing into the endless, endless fog…

"…Noone has come to visit in a while now," Teddie muttered to himself. "I wonder how everyone is doing?"

The thick masses of fog above him kept floating by, shape changing over and over. It was familiar to him and sort of calming, but also a strangely sad , fog, strange places where people from the other world got thrown in to die, more fog. That was all he ever saw anymore. He distantly remembered that there was less fog once and more to see. The scenery of this world had been so different, back then. He wondered…Did the world on the other side look very different too? The way the others spoke about it, it probably did.

"If I could go…"

_(I can't,)_ it rang again in the back of his mind again. But, surprisingly… it was more silent than before. Much more silent.

"Hm… Tomorrow, I'll try," he thought aloud. And when nothing in his mind objected, his face brightened. "Exactly! If no one comes to see Teddie, then Teddie will just go to see everyone! I'll teach them to just leave me all by my lonely, lonely lonesome self here for such an unbearably long time! That will show them!"

He laughed. At first, he thought, he was just joking with himself again. Right, like he'd ever manage. Like he'd ever dare. But then… The voice in his mind didn't come. The thought telling him what he '_couldn't_' do, what he '_mustn't_' try… It didn't come. It was just not there. And then, stopping to laugh, Teddie, eyes wide open, wondered to himself if maybe, just maybe, he could really do it tomorrow. Just stand up, walk over to the screen… touch it… go through… Be with them. With his friends. As one of them. That easily.

Suddenly… it all seemed so easy. Right… It was easy. He just had to go through. Just go through…

_(…I'm gonna do it,)_ he thought to himself _(Really and actually! No backing down now! I'm going! Whether or not they want me to!)_

And the more he realized that he was actually serious with his resolve, the more his smile brightened. It was going to happen. He was going to do it! He was!

…That's when the pain came.

It came suddenly, out of nowhere, and all the more did it hurt and cause him to cringe. A strong, ripping feeling from within. …Within? Wait, what, how could this be? There was nothing in there that could make him hurt like that! Was there…?

He couldn't think about it. In fact, he couldn't think much of anything. He was too busy trying to not scream loudly. He had never felt like this before. His entire body hurt and was horribly heavy. His fabric and fur were being torn long… It felt like something was trying to break free through him, ripping right through his body. He didn't know what was happening and it frightened him. He had never felt anything even remotely like this. While he had a concept of pain, it was actually quite simple. This was much more complex than anything he had ever experienced before. And much more agonizing too.

Was that it? Was he going to die now? Just like this? That wasn't right! He had only just gotten his Persona! He was supposed to help Sensei and the others now. He was supposed to fight with them! And he had just decided that he was going to see their world too. He was supposed to… be with them…

Teddie struggled. He tried to hold himself together, but… His strength was starting to fail him. His senses were getting confused, his vision randomly shrouded in darkness before returning to normal almost instantly, the feeling in his arms, body, legs, all shifted around between pain, somewhat normal sensation and a strange feeling like something was covering them all around. He had absolutely no orientation anymore. Finally, it all grew too much for him. He let out a short, tortured yell – one that no one would hear. Nobody was here, except for him. He knew that all too well. Nobody would hear him, nobody would come and search for him, nobody would find him. He was going to pass out here, he couldn't do anything against it and he didn't know what would happen to him while he was out. He was scared.

Just as his consciousness finally faded away from the strain, he swore, the last thing he could hear was the sound of his zipper violently opening.

* * *

And then, it was cold.

When he opened his eyes, that was the first thing he noticed. That it was cold, cold, cold so horribly cold! He'd never felt so frozen in his life before. Stupid fur, was supposed to keep him warm, but what was it doing now? Nothing, that's what!

The floor had never before felt so hard either… And then, when his vision came back, the fog had never looked so dense either… This was all strange.

…The pain was gone. He took a while to realize that, because he hadn't remembered right away what had actually happened before he had lost consciousness. But now, it all came back to him. It was clear as crystal what kind of torture he had gone through last night. And it was just as clear that this torture was over now. It was over. And he was alive.

Now, that was something!

Relief overcame him… Now if only it hadn't suddenly become so cold, cold, cold!

Grrr. Like being frozen alive. That had to be that stupid fog's doing. No wonder, with how dense it was today. He couldn't see through it at all, even though he had his special lenses!

He ended up sneezing… Was this what Yosuke had once called "catching a goshdarn cold"? No, please not, he didn't want to catch the cold. All that cold could go elsewhere, just not inside him! …Even if there was plenty of space…

As he was still thinking this, he was trying to sit up – and surprised when he found that his balance was way off. He almost fell over again the same moment he had sat up straight. Only with effort did he manage to stabilize himself. Something was strange… He wasn't dizzy or feeling light headed, so what was wrong with his balance? Actually, it wasn't just his balance. Something generally felt odd. Could the cold be to blame? No, that sounded unlikely… Still, it _was_unBEARably cold! (Yes, that emphasis was necessary!)

He rubbed his arms with his hands in order to warm up a bit – Wait.

Something was wrong here.

Something… with his arms. It took him a bit to notice but… They shouldn't have felt like that. He shouldn't be able to reach all the way to the opposite shoulders with them… right? He never had been able to reach up so far the opposite also…

-Wait. "Shoulders"?

Teddie shook. He didn't know if was because of the cold or because of how horribly wrong everything felt right now. But for a moment there, he felt frozen for a reason that definitely was _not_ the fog's fault. He should look down at himself. He had to look down at himself, at his body. He knew that. But he didn't dare. It took him half a minute, until he finally managed to swallow heavily, take a deep breath, close his eyes a moment… And then turn his gaze downwards, towards his body, his arms and his legs, which were still resting on the floor. But what he found there… Wasn't anything he'd have expected …

Smooth, pinkish (could you call that color that?) skin. Long, thin limbs separated into two halves, each with probably some kind of joints connecting them inside. The torso was slim and he could see the chest move as he breathed in and out. The hands branched out into not two, but five segments each, forming nice, thin fingers. He tried to move them. And move they did, with no trouble whatsoever. No doubt about it… This was a human. He was looking at a human body. Probably just like Yosuke's or Sensei's or maybe even Kanji's- No wait, this suddenly became very awkward. He stopped thinking among those lines.

"I…I'm…"

He didn't really know what to say. He just stuttered out sounds. They came out in his voice. His _own_ voice. At least this was still the same. But as for the rest…Was that really him? Even though the limbs he saw obeyed his thoughts, it was so hard to believe. What was going on…?

Mirror. He needed a mirror and quickly. But where in this fog could he find a mirror? He couldn't even see much further than his nose reached…

In the short distance, he spied the silhouette of something. Right, the exit… That should show his reflection just fine!

In excitement, Teddie tried to get on his feet, but just like before, gravity had decided that it was now his enemy and he had to deal with some failed attempts before he managed to somehow balance his new weight semi-correctly on the two, thin limbs. He managed to stumble his way over to the TV. In this short distance, the fog was thankfully not enough to obscure his entire vision. He could see the screen well enough. And when he saw his reflection… at first he didn't know if the eyes he saw were naturally this big, or if it was just the way he was feeling that did that.

A pair of blue eyes. Golden blonde hair, swept to one side, framing one of the prettiest faces he had yet seen… definitely in an entirely different league from Yosuke or especially Kanji. Hm, maybe even better-looking than Sensei? That was quite a claim to make, but he felt it was a valid one. A smile spread across his face… The pretty boy reflecting in the screen smiled back.

"Heeello there, handsome!" he laughed. And the boy in the TV moved his mouth synchronic to Teddie's voice.

He couldn't believe it. Was that really him? The same bear? He had to make really absolutely sure. He tried making a few expressions at first. Happy, tilting his head, bouncing around, upset, pouting, frowning… The image on the screen did everything like him. There was no other way. It was him.

That human boy was him.

So… he had turned into a human, one just like Sensei and the others? He didn't know what to think about that. On the one hand, _this_ was a look better than in his wildest dreams. Kusabear? Hah, who was that inferior Kusabear you speak of? _This_ is the face that should star in the movies next to Rise-chan! (Whatever exactly "the movies" might actually be…) All the scoring he could do like this! Scoring… scoring… High Score!

But, on the other hand, this was also somewhat upsetting. Just when he had managed to grow back all his beautiful fur! And his buttons had finally all been shiny again. And really, no matter how cuddly a human person became, nothing was as cuddly as Teddie! The Teddie up till now, at least.

Also, it was still cold. Very, very cold. He sighed, rubbing his hands against his arms again.

"Grrrr… This is grizzly. And I can't see a thing either! I don't think I can make myself a pair of glasses like that…"

Suddenly, the benefits of being a living box of wonders, hollow or not, came to him and he frowned. Right. He had just finished a pair of glasses for Rise-chantoo! He wondered where those had gone now… Hey, maybe if he searched them, he'd be able to use them to see a bit better again. Surely, Rise-chan wouldn't mind if he borrowed them for a while. But first he had to find them…

Carefully, Teddie made his way back to the spot where he had woken up. It was still stupidly difficult to move on his own two feet, but slowly, he was finding the right balance. After a few minutes of walking around, he was no longer swaying with every step and seemed to have finally found the right balance. Unfortunately this didn't do a thing against the fog and, unable to see much, he ended up walking in circles for a few minutes through the cold, trying to spot the distinct, pink pair of fog-dispelling glasses he had prepared for Rise. He wasn't very successful, though. A sneeze. A running nose. A sigh. Teddie was just about to give up and search for something to warm his half frozen, naked body (So THAT'S why Sensei and the others always wore so many unnecessary clothes when they came here!), when in a short moment of not looking at the floor, his foot hit something.

"W-_Whoa_!"

He almost tripped, but just in the last moment, Teddie managed to regain his balance. That had been a shock! Just what had he run against? It couldn't have been anything big, like a wall, or he'd have hit it head-on, but there shouldn't have been any short objects just lying on the floor around here. And also, the mystery-obstacle hadn't felt very hard either when his foot hit it. In fact, it had been rather soft and strangely fluffy…

…Soft and fluffy?

This time, he had no problem to just look down in order to confirm his suspicion. In fact, he did so almost immediately after having recovered from the sudden impact. And if the fog wasn't playing tricks on his eyes… Yeah, definitely.

It might sound ungodly creepy, but what he saw lying there to his feet, just slightly blurred by the fog… well, it was his own head.

Yes, for a normal person who knew what Teddie was like – or rather, was_supposed_ to be like – this might have sounded less unsettling than it seemed out of context. But actually, for Teddie himself, context didn't matter. It _was_unsettling. Beary, **beary** unsettling, in fact. So much, that for a few seconds, he just plain forgot how cold he was and took the time to just stare down at it. Down, at his once so adorable, cuddly former face, which now donned two so empty and dead eyes, he wasn't even surprised anymore that Yosuke had freaked out like he did when he first removed his head. This wasn't cute. This wasn't pretty either. Like this, it looked just horrifying! Yikes!

Sure enough, after a while of staring, his eyes had gotten adjusted enough to the fog to allow him to see that his poor, discarded head wasn't lying there all byit's lonely self… The rest of the body was right behind it. The zipper was wide open, revealing it to be as empty as it had always been, but a whole lot less lively.

And Teddie just stood there, speechless, and looked at it, for a whole while without saying a single word. He didn't even know anything to say about it. That was _him_, lying down there on the floor, beheaded, for crying out loud! No matter what kind of hot, dashing looks he had gotten in return, that didn't change that this just was wrong, wrong, wrong! H-He wasn't supposed to be able to look at it like that! He was supposed to _be in there_. No, even strange, he was supposed to _be it_.

Finally, he found his words again.

"I-I don't understand!" he blurted out very suddenly, wildly flailing his arms without even realizing it. "I-I am up here, but…I'm also down there! How did I get up here when I am _down there_?! Does that make sense? I don't think it does! Or am I just too dumb?!"

He thought about yelling for his Sensei and the others to come and help him, but he knew they wouldn't hear him over here, so instead he just let out a strange sound that sounded like a cross of a subdued roar, a childish shriek and a simple "_Ack_!".

The "him" down there… He remembered, when they first arrived here, Yosuke had called him a "_suit_" once. So the "suit" down there was him. But, on the other hand "he" was also up here. He was that pretty human boy he had seen in the screen earlier. There was no doubt about it. So if that "suit" was still there, how could he also be that boy then, if the suit was him too?

_(Uhm… Hmmm… Come to think… I was always empty,)_ he thought to himself, still on the verge to panicking. _(But I'm up here now, and the zipper is open, so… was I actually **inside** all along?)_

He wasn't sure if that explanation made sense, but he tried to _make_ it make sense.

_(So, if there was nothing inside first, but I **must** have been inside and now I am out and like this… Where did 'this' come from then? Was 'it' inside too, with me?)_

He kept pondering on. He felt he was halfway to making sense of his thoughts, even though really, he wasn't sure if he even _understood_ what he was thinking here.

_(…Ah!__ I see! That must be where all these strange sensations I had lately had come from. "This"… I had this growing inside me! That's why it had to come out yesterday! Ha, ha, I get it! …I think.)_

Teddie had a victorious grin on his face. So, that's where he got these sweet looks from! They were all self-grown! Finest Teddie handiwork! …Well, sort of. Hah, he had known all along the training would pay off! Again, score! Fist pump and small jump in the air.

…And slipping on the moist ground, losing his hard earned balance and falling to the floor. Painfully. Ouch. Teddie's enthusiasm was curbed a bit now. But well, at least he wasn't about to panic anymore. Even though he still found this all pretty strange. And you know what else he still "found?" That this fog was way, way, _way_ too cold!

"Uhhh…" Trying to lift his upper body again from the floor, Teddie gazed at the "him" opposite ofhim and moaned. "My beautiful, warm, soft fur. How I miss you…"

…Right. His fur. His, uhm… "suit," for lack of a better word. He kept looking at it. It was still empty. Empty… That meant stuff could go inside. He wondered just how much…

"Hm…Yeah, how much… That is a beary important question, I'd say…"

Teddie was rubbing his chin and closed his eyes. He had only ever stored small objects in there before. Never anything much bigger than the glasses he made for everyone. He had never before thought about how much could actually fit inside. He recalled one instance where Yosuke had been very exhausted in battle and been hit by a strange attack that made him all nervous and panicky. He had suddenly run from the front lines and demanded that Teddie hide him "inside". Of course, Teddie had refused. A bear had his pride, as he had said himself back then. (And a bear apparently should also always have a camera for such events, as Sensei had dryly remarked after the battle. He didn't entirely understand why, but if Sensei said so, it had to be true.) But if Yosuke would have actually fit inside? He really didn't know. And then there was still the fact of how much it had hurt last night, when he had "come out". He shivered even just thinking about it. Or maybe that was just from the cold…?

"Hm… I can always try…" he thought aloud. Right. If he didn't fit in, he'd realize soon enough. And having his fur cover just half of him was still better than having it cover nothing at all. He didn't want to know how much worse this strange sneezing spree he was on now would get if he didn't get a bit warmer soon. Without any more hesitation, Teddie took the open end of the "suit," stretched out his legs and slipped inside. He was extra careful not to accidentally damage anything. "Him" or not, this was still his beloved fur. He wasn't going to ruin all the hard work caring for it. So, he kept being mindful of everything he did. Left leg into left leg, right leg into right leg. Left arm into left arm, right arm into right arm… And then…

…By the time Teddie was done fitting his arms into the "suit," he realized how surprisingly easy it was. Everything seemed to fit perfectly… That was strange. He was sure that the human he had woken up as was quite a bit taller than he normally was. He couldn't tell how tall exactly, but he was certain about it. And yet, it didn't seem to make a difference. The legs and arms fit in where they belonged perfectly and the part with the zipper went up all the way to his neck. Immediately, the cold got weaker and he started to warm up. Still, he wasn't done yet. In the end, he finally picked up the head. He was careful to fit it onto the body just like it belonged. Then, he closed the zipper…

…His vision was dark for only a short moment. Before he knew it, he unexpectedly could see again. And not just that. He saw much better than before too. The fog seemed to be all gone. Just like he'd always been able to see through it. That wasn't all. Teddie didn't take long to realize, that the moment he had closed the zipper, something had changed. His "senses" had shifted, and albeit it wasn't as violent as it had happened last night, it was still noticeable. His paws, his feet… He had feeling in them, just like he had always had. It didn't feel like anything was covering them, it felt just "natural."

He took a few testing steps around. Then, he ran over to the screens of the Exit TV, just to make sure again. His arms, his legs, even his good, old, adorable face… All moved smoothly and normally. He was completely back to "normal."To the normal Teddie.

And all it had taken to do this was putting the "suit" on again. How very, very interesting…

"Hm… Does that mean…"

His research in the great field of Bear-ology was not over yet! Experiment Numéro Trois! '_Does it work the other way around too?'_

Eagerly, Teddie fumbled around with his hands behind his back until he got ahold of his zipper. Once more, he opened it. Immediately, the "shift" in his senses occurred again. It was a strange feeling… but he could get used to it. When his vision was back, he was still facing the TV screens. He saw the blonde, blue eyed boy-Teddie again, holding bear-Teddie's head just bearly above his own. And he smiled.

…This was going to be so much fun, heh heh. He couldn't wait to see what the others would say once he showed this to them! Sensei, Yosuke, Kanji, and… oh… of course… especially Chie-chan and Yuki-chan and Rise-chan!

How very good he had made sure to learn as much as possible about how to treat beautiful ladies like them from the very important study materials Rise-chan had left to him! A perfect coincidence. He felt that he was more than prepared to present this little "surprise" to his friends. He could already see it. They wouldn't be able to take their eyes off him!

_"Oh, my, Teddie-san, you are such a charming prince." "Mr. Bear, please be the action in my life!" "No, stop, Teddie-kun, don't look at me with those crystal eyes, my heart, my heart, it beats too fast, aaahhh!"_

Yes, it was going to be _glorious_.

…But first, he had to meet them, of course.

Teddie's demeanor turned a whole lot more serious. Of course, he could just wait for them to come visit, but… That's when he remembered what he had decided the day before. Yeah… he was going to see the other side. He was going to try. He had decided that for sure. And well, was there any better time to do that than now? This was a sign! It had to be for sure! Yes, he was destined to go over there! Right now!

…He still felt a bit anxious about it.

The other world… What could it be like…? Were all humans nice like his friends? If so, then it would sure be great to go right now…

The zipper still wide open and the suit's head still detached, Teddie hesitantly reached out his hand – his human hand – for the screen before him and touched it. He pulled back a bit very quickly. The surface under his fingers moved. Like turning to water, waves formed where he had touched and drew growing circles around the spot. He gazed at it in fascination for a bit, before he led his hand to the screen again. And the same spectacle repeated. This time, he didn't pull back. Instead, he led his fingers along the screen. Made use of the fact how thin they were to draw patterns on the screen with them. Just watched the waves follow his motions. He fooled around a bit this way. Then he laughed.

So it was true… He could really go through…

…Nothing objected in his mind. Not even distantly. Where had the voice in his head gone that had always kept him from leaving? Right now, he couldn't hear it anymore. And that meant there was no reason to care about what it had always said anymore, right?

Right… He was Sensei's friend. And a Persona User. And now, he had a body like Sensei and the others too! There was no way he shouldn't be allowed to go!

Renewing his resolve from the night before this way, Teddie gave a short nod to himself in the reflection shown on the screen. He quickly reattached the head to his suit and closed the zipper. And then, being just a little bit nervous, Teddie charged, took a big leap…

…And jumped right through the screen of the Exit TV.

"Sensei! Everyone! Here I coooome!"


	2. The Unexpected

_This took longer than expected because of some Beta-Reading troubles. Frankly, this chapter isn't as good as the first one, which I attribute to it being written while I was in total exam stress and me sorta being in a writting slump right now. Also, half of this chapter is game script. You probably know which scene it's going to be. The following chapters are going to be better, I promise._

* * *

"_Every day's great at your Junes!"_

Well, yeah. He definitely agreed that this day was great. Still, this wasn't the greeting he'd expected. Definitely not. A happy melody rang through the air, immediately surprising him as to where it was coming from or why it was playing. He knew people could play music on devices, like Yosuke's headphones, but why did someone play music so loud here? What kind of place was this? The light was so bright; he hadn't seen something like that since the strip club! Still, this place was nothing like the strip club. The colors were much friendlier and everything seemed to shine and gleam. So much white and many pale oranges and reds. And then there were so many voices all around. Also, there wasn't a single hint of fog.

Was this the fabled "Junes"? Teddie had been prepared for the unexpected. But this was even more unexpected than he could have imagined. He had been right, the voices were humans. He could see them around, just a bit away! They were talking and walking and taking things from shelves and putting them back…

…There were two humans right with him. One woman and one man. They wore fitting outfits. And they were looking right down at him. They seemed puzzled. Why? Had he done anything puzzling?

They exchanged glances. They looked down at him. He exchanged glances with them. He looked up at them. For just a moment, the fact that Chie and Yosuke hadn't exactly reacted calmly to him when they had first met came to his mind. But well… that was Yosuke, and Chie-chan could be a bit easily flustered from time to time too. That didn't mean all humans would find it strange to see him, right? He should just act natural. If he only knew what exactly one would consider "natural" in this world… His friends were already all so different from each other, he had no way to tell!

Finally, after a short while of the two humans gazing down at Teddie, the man above him spoke to him.

"Eh… Excuse me… little boy? That is a, well… very pretty costume you have there!"

Pretty. Well, that seemed like a nice enough start! Even though he wasn't "little," but he could forgive that. Teddie smiled.

"Thank you, Mister!"

The woman bent down to his level. She smiled at Teddie and said, "Say, what are you doing here, all alone? Were you on your way somewhere? A party, maybe? Did you lose your parents?"

The man bent down too, albeit not as much as the woman. "We could help you search, if you want us to."

Teddie got up from the floor, so the two wouldn't have to look down so far. "Parents?" he asked. "No, I'm not searching for anything like that! I came to see Sensei and Yosuke!"

The woman lolled her head in surprise. "Huh? You know Yosuke-kun?"

Teddie nodded, "This is place… This is the 'Junes' place, right? Sensei always says that Junes is Yosuke's place! So I should be able to meet him here!"

The woman still seemed surprised, but not like she didn't understand what he meant. Standing up straight, she turned to the man.

"Huh… Hanamura-san's son… and a teacher? Maybe Yasogami High is having a sort of excursion here today?"

"Not that I'd know." The man shrugged. "But if he's Yosuke-kun's friend, then this boy is probably in his school, right?"

"I don't know. The voice makes it hard to tell, but isn't he a little short for that?"

"That costume he's wearing… Maybe Hanamura-san had Yosuke-kun hire him for a promotion!"

"I haven't heard of a promotion either, though…"

The two people kept talking to each other like this for a bit, leaving Teddie to wonder what the problem was. They could just tell him if Yosuke was here or not, right? He didn't really get was that whole stuff about "promotions" or "schools" was about…

Finally, the woman bent down to his level again.

"Say, would you tell us your name maybe?"

"I'm Teddie," he replied to the simple question.

"Oh… A foreign name, I see! That explains your accent! Eddie, then…"

"Teddie…" he corrected, a bit upset. How did she get his pretty name wrong? "I'm Teddie."

"Yes, like I said! Terry-san…" The woman continued, apparently oblivious to his corrections. "Anyway, I don't know when Yosuke-kun wanted to meet with you, but I think you must have confused the times. Yosuke-kun still has classes right now. He won't be back for at least another half hour. I don't know about your teacher, though…"

"How about you just wait here?" The man chimed in from above. "If Yosuke-kun is supposed to meet with you here, I am sure he will come straight back here from school today, so you shouldn't have to wait too long. Is that alright?"

"Oh… OK." Teddie nodded, trying not to show that he understood only just about half of what the two of them had said. "If Yosuke's going to be here soon, that's fine. I'll wait then. Thank you very much, Miss and Mister!"

He bowed slightly, because that's what you do when you want to be polite to someone. Something he read said so. He didn't exactly understand why, though… Well, the woman seemed to like it, and that's what counted. She was smiling kindly. Hm… he had to try being even nicer to her later, if he got a chance. For now, however, he had about half an hour until at very least Yosuke would come here. Half an hour… that was quite a while. Time for exploration! The bit he had already seen of this place was really interesting already. He was just itching to see more!

He turned and ran off into one of the nearby aisles. In a zigzag, he took alternate glances at the shelves to both of his sides. They were stacked to the top with many different things, gizmos and doo-dads he had never seen. Most of them had screens, just like a TV, but smaller. He wondered what these devices were used for. He had to ask the others later. He sprinted off to another aisle. This one was filled with different items, small, thin boxes, which looked like you couldn't store much in them. They had interesting sounding titles written on their sides in colorful writings. Like "_Featherman R_" or "_Witch Detective Loveline_" or "_Trial of the Dragon_"! (Wait, didn't he hear the last one before, somewhere? …)

Everything was so colorful and diverse… No comparison to all the places the Shadows inhabited over on his side. The atmosphere was so different. Curiously eyeing everything closely, he continued his path through the department store, oblivious to the occasional looks he drew from people. Eventually, he came to a more open area again. It looked similar to the place with the big TVs. The machines here looked a lot like TVs too, but they also had these strange boxes with lights and buttons on them standing there, one per screen… and small, strangely shaped devices and long boards with keys that had letters on them. He wondered what those were for. He tried to press a key on one of the boards… No, his hand was too big! He couldn't hit the small key precisely. Ah, so that was why humans had such small fingers! He had to try this again later then, after "changing." For now, however, his exploration of the strange world on the other side of the TV had to continue! It was so exciting! And the nice music in the background definitely helped making his mood even better. After a while, he couldn't help but hum along with it.

He was just about to dash off again to the next place to take a look at, when he turned to find that there was someone standing right behind him. Two small children were looking at him with big eyes. Teddie looked right back like them. They seemed fascinated by something. Maybe by him? Well, he couldn't blame them then. After all, he _was_ pretty fascinating, right? He tried lifting his hand and waved at the children with a smile. Immediately, their faces brightened. They started to laugh. Teddie laughed along.

Just then, the melody started over again from the loudspeakers. "_Every day's great at your Junes!_" the lady sang. Teddie was in such a good mood, he couldn't help going along,

"…your Junes~!"

And the children threw their hands up in the air and repeated after him: "Junes! Yay!"

The children fell back into a short laughing fit with Teddie, which went on for a while as a few nearby onlookers drew closer.

"_Huh, a Mascot?"_

"_The first time I see that around here."_

"_Well, the children seem to like it. That's good."_

"_What do bears have to do with Junes?"_

"_Does it really matter? It's cute!"_

Teddie could hear most of what the people around him said very clearly and though he didn't understand all of it, that which he understood made him happy. "The children like him"… "good"… "cute"… Hearing all these nice things said about him by strangers without him prompting them to say it made him one very happy bear. And he got even happier when one little girl of the children around actually came up and started hugging him in fascination. Yeah… that really was a good feeling.

"K-Kyo-chan!"

A woman calling the girl this, probably her mother, suddenly came run up to him nervously and quickly separated her child from him.

"Kyo-chan! You can't just do that!" the woman scolded her child.

'Kyo-chan' just giggled and kept stretching her hands out for Teddie,

"Teddy-bear! Teddy~!"

Teddie stood straight and proudly, as if he took Kyo-chan's saying his name as a great honor. Her mother, however, seemed more than just a little embarrassed. "Oh, I am sorry, sir, so sorry! She just suddenly dashed off and…"

"It's all right. I really, really don't mind!" Teddie interrupted her. "Actually, I even think it's really beary nice! Nothing's bad about a little hug, right? I'm a cuddly bear, after all!"

When he did so some others of the little children took that as a cue to start hugging and petting him as well. At first, Teddie was a bit surprised by how many of them there suddenly were, but, true to his word, he found himself genuinely enjoying the affection very quickly. He relaxed.

All those people really seemed to like him… The other side was awesome! Why didn't he come here much, much sooner? Or, even more important, why didn't the others ever think of inviting him over? He'd have to tell them off as soon as he found them! Especially Yosuke! He had such an amazing place, right here, in front of the exit, and never even thought of sharing it with him? What a meanie!

The small crowd of onlookers thinned out after a while, with the parents who had to move on to continue their shopping tour taking the children along. When finally only a few children were left around, Teddie excused himself and got going himself. There still was so much more to explore, after all!

Teddie waved at the children as he ran off and the remaining children waved back. He continued his path through the many, many aisles and corridors. This place was huge and a bit confusing, like a labyrinth. Stacks over stacks of devices and small items… In the area he was in, everything seemed to be electronic. So this was the so-called "Electronic Department at Junes" that his friends would so often talk about! He was beginning to understand. Fascinating!

Teddie was just about to take a different path and see what else this place might hold for him – after all, if this was just one department, there had to be more, right? – when he suddenly spotted something that struck him as odd: A whole display with chairs. Chair next to chair, lined up neatly in a row. They looked like valuable chairs too. Black and covered in leather and they looked very soft and comfortable. Teddie stepped closer, curious. What were chairs doing in an "Electronic Department"? Chairs weren't electronic! Even he knew that! He carefully touched one, just to make sure that it really *was* a chair… Well, it sort of felt like one. Still, that did not explain what a chair was doing among all these electronic gizmos and doo-dats. Finally, though, Teddie found a satisfying explanation for that one too:

"Hah… Silly Yosuke, putting the chairs in the Electronics Department!" he decided. "Tsk tsk Ttsk! …Well, if it's here already, don't mind if I try if it can _bear_ me! _Hee hee_!"

A short bounce and Teddie landed right on one of the black-leathered pieces of furniture. Ah! How soft! He had never sat on anything that comfortable before. Yes, definitely a chair, and what a chair! The best chair he had ever sat on! Now, he just had to lean back… but his arms on the armrests…

With a sudden, unexpected sound, like something booting up, Teddie felt the chair under him beginning to rumble. At first he was surprised and wanted to jump up, but that's when something under the chair's soft surface had already started moving. Before Teddie even had a chance to get frightened, he realized what it was really doing now – and that was massaging his back. And given that he had been feeling horribly, horribly stiff for a whole while now, that was just about the best feeling he could have gotten right now. Letting out a big sigh of satisfaction, Teddie let himself sink even further into the chair. So comfortable…

_(The colors, the sounds, the smells… ah, everything here is so nice,)_ he thought to himself as he relaxed. _(It was a good idea to come here! But… this world is much bigger than just this one place, right? I wonder where I could go next?)_

Teddie thought to himself for a while. Sure, he could try to see if he could smell out any of the others and just go and see if he could find them, but then again, his nose hadn't really been reliable lately. He didn't know this world well. What if he got lost and didn't find the way back anymore? Just wandering around all by himself didn't seem like such a good idea…

_(…But I'm not going back. Not so soon. I still want to see more,)_ he decided. _(Maybe it'd be better to just keep waiting for the others. That's right, the nice lady and that guy said Yosuke was gonna be here soon… So, if I just wait, they're bound to show up right? Right… I should just… take a little bear nap… Hmm…)_

And as Teddie was still thinking this, already was he drifting off with his thoughts, far, far away, to even more colorful places, as what he imagined the rest of this world to be like. He left himself float in his daydreams like this, just bearly awake, until finally, two voices in not too far distance caught his attention.

"_Please, don't tell me…"_

"_Whoa, h-he's here!"_

Heh, so there they were. Sounding surprised already, and yet they had no idea that he had even bigger surprises in stock for them. Teddie smirked and kept enjoying the massage chair for a bit longer, until his friends came over to talk to him.

* * *

"Okay, just to make sure, I'm gonna ask you one last time," Yosuke bent over to him, staring intently. "Nobody was over there, except for you, until the fog came back. Correct?"

Teddie didn't let Yosuke's tense glare disturb him and calmly took a sip of his drink. "That's what I've been saying."

Sheesh, why was he being questioned here? Yosuke really wasn't that good a listener was he? After all, even Chie-chan and Sensei had agreed that Teddie had probably been right when he had first said no one else had been over. Even with his nose as weak and unreliable as it was lately, he would still have smelt something had someone been on his side. He had been there all the time, after all. Of course, there was that short while he had been unconscious, but that was long after the fog had already settled back in. And his friends didn't really need to know about that.

He took another sip. Man, this soda stuff sure was good, but the can was almost empty, and he still felt thirsty. Ever since they had stepped outside that building Junes was in, it had been so unbearably hot... Much too hot for someone with as beautiful and warm fur as him. Teddie took a deep breath, as Chie chimed in on the discussion.

"He didn't show up on the Midnight Channel either…"

"What's up with that?" Kanji seemed just as confused as everyone else.

Yosuke couldn't help but look annoyed by the whole matter, "No clue… But I think we can be sure now that King Moron was never thrown into the TV."

"Then, what, he was killed over here?" Chie visibly shared Yosuke's annoyance. "Why not throw him into a TV, like all the rest?"

"I think they never meant to throw him in," a voice from the other side of the table commented, drawing everyone's attention. Their leader was talking.

Yosuke didn't seem to quite follow. "They never intended to… So you're saying he wasn't like the other victims to begin with? But why?"

Yu went on explaining: "Think about it. It's been a few months now, and their Modus Operandi failed again and again. Wouldn't it make sense that they just decided to change it?"

"Yeah… Maybe the culprit thought he couldn't kill any more people by throwing them into TVs. I mean, we prevented his last three attempts in a row," Yukiko followed Yu's reasoning, causing him to nod in response.

Chie's eyes widened as she listened, "Ahhh, I get you two… That could be it!"

"So they snuffed someone on our side this time to make sure it worked." It seemed like Kanji really didn't like the sound of that. "Dammit… If that's true, then we have no way of preventing more murders unless we catch the killer!"

"We need more clues…" Chie reminded them with a sigh. "I wonder if Rise-chan's up and around yet."

"Yeah… we'll have to put our hopes on her," Yosuke agreed. And everyone nodded, determination in their eyes. They were gonna crack this case. They had to. All of their minds seemed to be one that moment.

Well, except for one of them. Teddie was too distracted by something else to care much about what anyone was saying. This "something else" being the suffocating heat, which somehow made him feel even less comfortable than he had been unprotected in the freezing cold fog earlier. Finally, he put down the can on the table and sighed loudly.

"Uhh. It's so hot out," he stated, while bringing his paws behind his head. What left him cold on his side would keep him just about cool enough over here. So, it was fur-down time. "…I'm taking this off."

There was a short moment of silence. Despite the topic having been something entirely different just moments ago, all eyes were at Teddie now.

"…'Off'?" Yu mouthed the word more than actually pronouncing it.

Yosuke blinked a few times. "Wait, you're not talking about your head, are you!?"

Just when Teddie had finally managed to grab the little metal piece between his paws and started to pull on it, Yosuke gave him a smack on the top of the head and pushed his arms away from the zipper.

"Cut it out! There's kids watching!" He clearly had trouble keeping his voice down. "Geez… They'll be scarred for life if they see an empty mascot walking around. Have a little consideration, man."

Yukiko quickly tried to keep it from escalating into a fight by making a comment before Teddie could even try to argue. "I'm glad you're back to normal, though. Your fur's all fuzzy again!"

Kanji started shifting in his chair at the mention of the word "fuzzy". Something about it seemed to be triggering a part of him he could hardly just hide right now.

"C-Can I feel it…?" he hesitantly asked, starring over at Teddie with the eyes of a five-years-old in a candy store.

"No!" Teddie shot the answer out bluntly. His mood was really not the best right now. Sheesh, not only was it horrbearibly hot out here, now, just when he had wanted to dramatically unveil his spectacular surprise, Yosuke had managed to ruin it. Oh well, the world was probably not ready for surprises of such unbearlievable proportions yet anyway. He could probably just let the cat out of the bag (or the boy out of the bear?) and get this done with. Deciding this, Teddie gave his friends a mischievous smile.

"Actually, I'm no longer a hollow bear! Mwahaha!" He pumped his paw to a fist and gazed up to the sky dramatically. "I trained and trained, hoping to someday score with Chie-chan and Yuki-chan… And now I finally have an inside!"

Despite of all the passion he put into this declaration, Chie could just barely stop herself from groaning in response. "Yeah… good job with that."

Yukiko, on the other hand, looked like she was just about to try and twist his arm again. "Come on! Can't we give it a rest with the whole 'scoring' thing?"

And just when Teddie wanted to open his mouth again and go on, Yosuke drove right over him with his own words: "Dude, you're hollow. Taking your head off isn't gonna cool you down!"

Wait, what, what, what?! Teddie couldn't believe what he heard. What kind of bearricades was that guy plugging his ears with? He wasn't even wearing those headphones right now, for roaring out loud! Was Yosuke really actively avoiding listening to him at all? Teddie felt angry and the anger made him feel even hotter and that made him even angrier. He growled.

"But I just told you! I'm not hollow anymore!" he yelled Yosuke in the face. Maybe he used up a little bit too much of his breath doing so, though, because next thing he knew, Teddie found himself gasping. "Agh, it's too hot. I can't stand it…!"

Before Yosuke could even try to interrupt him again, Teddie quickly grabbed his zipper and pulled, pulled, pulled. The heat had made the zipper's metal expand, making it resist him for just a moment, but finally, he managed to open up the rift. Yosuke made a last futile attempts to stop him, as Chie, Kanji, Yu and Yukiko just stared puzzled, probably wondering if Teddie had maybe lost his last marbles somewhere on the way between his world and this one. However, Teddie didn't let anything hold him back – mostly because he was sure that he would not survive even a second more of this horrible heat. With a quick move, the head was off. Teddie took a deep breath as soon as his vision and feeling had shifted. Air! Wonderful, cool air! The breath was followed by an equally deep sigh of relief.

However, Teddie's sighing wasn't the only sound heard that moment. Everyone at the table made some kind of sound the moment their little bear companion's head had come off. First of all, there was Yosuke, who slightly backed off in shock right away. His eyes made it clear that the shock he had been expecting to hit him was _nothing_ compared to the one he had actually been faced with now.

"W-Woah! _What the…!?_"

His pupils had practically shrunk down to sesame seeds as he stared down at the person besides him like said person had just grown a second head – which wasn't too far off from the truth anyway. Yosuke's exclamation was quickly followed by Chie jerking up, Yukiko bringing her hand to her mouth as if to suppress a shriek and Kanji and Yu just staring, absolutely at loss regarding what to say. Yu did blink a few times, as if to make sure that it weren't just his eyes playing tricks on him, though. But, nope. What he saw didn't change, even after four times blinking.

Across from them at the table, clad from shoulders to bottom in what was still very much recognizable as the bottom part of their friend Teddie, sat a lean, blonde boy, younger than any of them, drenched by sweat so badly it made it look like he was _sparkling_ in the light of the hot summer sun. Not like the sparkles were needed to drive home the point that he was abnormally pretty. His face did a fine job with that all on its own. He looked around thirteen or fourteen years old, but it was impossible to tell if this guess was spot on. The fact that his features were vaguely foreign – as if the golden blonde hair and the sky-blue eyes weren't a dead giveaway he wasn't Japanese already – really didn't help. Well, then again, his age wasn't really their main concern at the moment anyway. It was much more his _mere existence_, right here, right now, that caused them all to lean forward, and gaze upon Teddie's seat like it was going to explode any second.

Teddie did not take notice of any of that, of course. He was too busy taking deep breaths full of wonderfully cool air.

"Haaaaaaaah. Much… better…"

Maybe it was the sound of Teddie's voice coming out of Mystery-Pretty-Boy that helped Chie reaffirm that, yes, she was indeed still awake and not dreaming, but in any case, this was the moment she managed to break free of her momentary stupor as the first of the entire remaining group. She put her regained ability to speak immediately.

"No way!"

As Chie was starting to wildly gesture around between her and the other side of the table, as if she was trying to say something about the situation, but couldn't really come up with anything that would even begin to describe it, Mystery-Pretty-Boy had already grabbed Teddie's soda can in front of him and brought it up to his lips fairly dramatically. He downed the remaining contents completely in one go.

"Ahh… Now _that_ hit the spot."

By that point, Chie had given up and rejoined the others in staring at Mystery-Pretty-Boy. There was really not much else to do than stare at him. Even if it was slightly awkward. And yet strangely mesmerizing. Mystery-Pretty-Boy was quick to take advantage of everyone's paralysis and proceeded to throw some winks and smiles in Chie's and Yukiko's directions.

"Hey, Chie-chan, Yuki-chan."

The voice was definitely Teddie's. The problem was that the face that went with it gave you the impression of being in the dub of a movie which had something go terribly wrong when they casted the voice actors. In any case, Yukiko was frozen stiff, despite the heat, and thus it was up to Chie to react to Mystery-Pretty-Boy's charming greetings.

"Y-Yes…?" she uttered hesitantly.

He proceeded to lean closer to Chie and smile at her in a way that was clearly meant to be seductive. And had the situation been any different, it would most likely have succeeded in appearing so as well.

"Do you have anything to wear? I'm basically like a newborn at the moment…"

This was the moment that Yosuke, who was still looking on in both confusion and horror, decided that this was, in fact, a porn flick. Not reality. Just a bad dream he got after accidentally watching a horrible, horrible porn flick. Yes, and presumably said porn flick's sound director had died of a sudden, untimely death in a fire, which also cost them all the tapes from the castings for the voice of Mystery-Pretty-Boy, except for one, and thus that was the voice they ultimately had to go with. That voice sounding exactly like Teddie was entirely coincidental. It had to be. Or that's what Yosuke would have liked to think. This whole situation was just so horribly surreal; he wanted to find an explanation for it that would not make him wonder if he was just lacking the intellect to understand the world any longer. Just once, please. Unfortunately, he knew that reality wasn't that kind to him.

Meanwhile, Chie was still trying to wrap her mind around the situation well enough to actually keep up the conversation.

"T-Teddie? Is that really you…?"

"Mystery-Pretty-Boy" – Teddie – answered the question with another sweet wink, before turning to Yukiko again and bestowing upon her yet another wink. Yukiko, unlike Chie, had yet to find anything even resembling words again.

"Umm…"

And Yu and Kanji kept staring. And staring. And staring. Somewhere in-between, the latter of them started exchanging a few nervous glances with Yosuke, who couldn't do anything but give a desperate shrug. Yu, on the other hand, picked up his soda can, carefully studied the label, as if to make sure that it really did contain what he had originally assumed it does, then proceeded to alternately look at the can, at "Teddie" and the can again.

Sure, they had long known that you can never know what to expect with Teddie. But never ever would they have even dreamt of something like _this_. And as if the situation couldn't get even more awkward, Chie suddenly took notice of something that made every one of the gathered here even less comfortable in their skin. (With the exception of Teddie, who had already shed his. Sort of.)

"Wait, did you say you're like a newborn!?" She gulped, her face turning bright red.

Like on cue, Yosuke jerked and took a wiiiide step back, Kanji quickly averted his eyes as if he had caught a glimpse of the demoness Medusa and Yu brought his soda can to his mouth and took a big, long sip. Yukiko was still too shocked to do much of anything.

"Eh, then don't take the bottom part off!" Chie slowly slipped off her seat, and began to approach Teddie, albeit only with the hesitance of someone approaching a wild animal.

"You need some clothes right? C'mon, let's go look around…"

She gave Yukiko a glance while biting her lip, as if to tell her '_C'mon, help me out here, please!_' and so, finally, Yukiko started to move again, albeit slowly and somewhat robotically. Both girls only carefully placed themselves left and right from Teddie, holding up his suit to prevent it from falling down as he got up with a satisfied smile on his face. They knew very much what he was thinking about right now and they didn't like it. Still, he was their friend. They wouldn't let him run around the Junes food-court naked, for his sake as well as theirs. Clinging tightly to the very familiar fabric containing the very unfamiliar contents, the girls dragged Teddie out of the court, leaving behind three dumbstruck guys at a white table.


	3. Should We put a Leash on Him?

_This is what I currently write to calm my nerves when I am feeling down because it's fluff that requires barely and planning and makes me feel good. I currently have, like, three chapters of this sitting on my hard-drive, unbetaed, so if you like this, never fear. There's more to come. _

* * *

All in all, Teddie thought that this went spectacularly well. His surprise had still brought shock and awe to the faces of his friends and even earned him just the amount of attention he had originally hoped it would. And now he had Chie-chan to his right and Yuki-chan to his left, walking down the way back to the pleasantly cool building with him. Could this day still get any better? Maybe it could. He threw his arms around the girls' shoulders and sighed in bliss.

"Ahhh… That's life."

"If you like that life, you'd better not overdo it," Chie whispered to him with a slight hiss in her voice, trying to get his arm off her. "We're already attracting way too much attention as it is! You're just slowing us down even more like that. We need to get this over with, _fast_…"

"Ouch! How hurtful, Chie-chan," the boy pouted at her with big eyes. "And there I was thinking you two would enjoy spending some quality time with me now."

"I still can't believe this…" Yukiko stared at the floor, actively trying to avoid looking at Teddie. "I-I mean…"

She never said what she meant, because she never finished the sentence. Her upholding of the suit became more halfhearted, but Chie didn't complain, rather, she tried twice as hard herself instead. She felt sorry for Yukiko being in this embarrassing situation. Well, they both were, but she still felt that this was probably even less comfortable for Yukiko than it was for herself.

"The elevator's just up ahead. Clothes are sold on the 3rd floor, I think. Come on, guys."

All throughout their way, the eyes of the boy walking between them were absolutely everywhere. Every wall, ever y decoration, every carpet and every window – Teddie gazed at it all with the curiousness of a little child and even occasionally reached out his hand to touch something. Too bad that Chie wouldn't allow him to stray from the way. Every attempt he made was punished by having his arm yanked right back by her. Boring. What was so bad about taking just a tiny look? There were so many things he had never seen before, so much he wanted to know about, but it seemed that further exploration would have to wait till later, as Chie-chan seemed very intent on keeping the group moving forwards, to their designated destination.

As soon as they reached the pair of elevators that led to the different departments, Chie pushed – or rather, punched – the button. They waited right in the middle between the two elevators, knowing just all too well that choosing one in advance would only result in the exact other one arriving. After about a minute or two the right cabin's doors opened. They entered and thanked god that the elevator was blissfully empty. It didn't take long for the doors to close.

"Wow! It's moving!" Teddie's voice noticed with fascination.

"Well, yeah, of course it's moving. It's an elevator," Chie stated. "Have you never seen an elevator before?"

"I know what an elevator is, but I never rode one before. Hee hee, this is kind of fun."

He made an attempt of jumping up and down in the moving cabin, but Chie managed to keep him on the ground.

"Keep it down!" she warned.

The boy turned to her with a grin,

"You know how it would be even better? This thing should have windows. Then you could look out and watch everything rush by! Like this! Wooooooosh!"

He demonstrated his line of thoughts with a quick move of his right arm. Chie was less than impressed, but whatever made him happy...

"Umm, there are elevators with glass walls," Yukiko was still averting her eyes. "But some people are uncomfortable riding in them. People with acrophobia, for example."

"Acro-fee…" Teddie bent to Yukiko and blinked a few times. "…Come again?"

"I think she means people with a fear of heights," Chie noted and as she did, the boy's eyes sparkled with fascination from having understood what she meant.

"I see! Wow, Yuki-chan really does know everything!"

Examining him closely, Chie then spoke to him. "You know, it's odd how easily you are getting so excited about these little things. Maybe you really _are_ Teddie."

"Of course I'm Teddie! Teddie is Teddie," he laughed. "Who else should I be?"

"Someone who is not half naked and leaning his arm on my shoulder…" Yukiko mumbled, her face flushing red.

Chie had a distinct feeling that Yukiko did not exactly connect the best of memories with situations like _this_, what with her regularly helping out in the inn's restaurant and bar and all, so she decided to say something,

"T-Teddie, I think it'd be better if you didn't touch Yukiko like that. She really doesn't like that."

"Aww…" he seemed very reluctant to retreat from his position. "But I thought I was finally going to sco-"

"Don't say it!"

That call belonged to a suddenly not-at-all-hesitant-anymore Yukiko. Chie hadn't even noticed her raising her head, that's how quickly it had happened. A gaze burning with the flare of Konohana-Sakuya's fire was aiming straight at Teddie. He gulped and quickly pulled his arm away. Some risks just weren't worth it, he decided. Just then, a bell announced that they had reached their destination. Yukiko let her eyes off him, postponing the mental incineration of her sensualist of a friend to later, while Chie continued dragging the boy along through the store.

Leaving the elevator was a needlessly awkward experience for the girls, because even though Junes was unusually empty for this time of the day, they still drew the looks of all the costumers that were there. All they could hope was that nobody would recognize their faces, but this was Inaba. Someone was _bound_ to know them here. Keeping their heads low, Yukiko and Chie took as quick, long steps as they could without knocking the boy in the suit they were dragging along over.

Teddie was not especially bothered by the people's stares all around him. Actually he rather enjoyed the attention. He had never seen so many people in one place and never had had so many eyes on him before. It was exciting for him to see them move, gather around, take notice of him, to just see them acknowledging that he was there. They passed a woman carrying a red cocktail dress in her hands, who was staring at the group in a dumbstruck manner. Teddie smiled and waved at her. She just remained standing there and staring, not returning the greeting.

Unlike Chie and Yukiko, the whole situation did not make Teddie feel uncomfortable in the least and the thought that this might be embarrassing didn't even cross his mind. Of course he noticed that the people around seemed to have odd reactions to him, but he decided to chalk that up to the fact that he had no comparison save for Sensei and his other friends. He didn't know too many humans. Neither did he really know the human concept of "shame" yet. Accordingly, he had none.

Chie and Yukiko were already both suspecting that something like that was probably the reason for the odd behavior of the boy with them. All the more proof that said boy was indeed, somehow, in a strange, unfathomable way, their friend Teddie. It was still a bit much to swallow for both of them, but also sort of a relief. Sure, walking around with a half-naked, human Teddie was a million kinds of uncomfortable, but it was still less unpleasant than walking around with a half-naked stranger. Somewhat.

"Alright, women's clothing to the right, men's clothing to the left," Chie read off a sign. She really didn't go shopping at Junes a lot. Weird, considering how often she came here, but that was probably because she wasn't much into shopping for clothing anyway.

Yukiko looked at Chie, "We'll probably have to start by picking underwear. That's on the other side of the-"

"Oh, oh, over there! I want to try that!"

Before Yukiko had even finished her sentence, she and Chie suddenly felt how the cloth of the suit they were holding onto was being yanked out of their hands. Teddie, suddenly very capable of carrying his fur all by himself, was dashing off into the store.

"Ooooh no," Chie's voice was trembling in horror. "He's going straight for the ladies' section..."

"T-Teddie!" Yukiko wasn't even sure if she was calling _for_ him, or yelling _at_ him. Whichever it was, he didn't react to it in the slightest.

The girls knew they had to act and act fast. With a quick nod at each other, they ran after their escaped bear. Sure enough, they soon found him amidst the tightly packed clothes racks, his eyes sparkling with so much bliss that one might have thought he had just found the entrance to Eden.

"Teddie!" Chie hurried to his side, relieved to see that his suit was still covering all the important parts. "You can't just-"

He cut her right off, cramming wildly in a rack hung full with dresses,

"Chie-chan, Yuki-chan, look!"

Teddie yanked something off the rack and proudly turned to Chie to present it to her. The dress he held was blue, with puffy, short sleeves. It came with a frilly apron of sorts.

"Isn't it bear-fect?" Teddie kept waving the dress in front of Chie's face. She looked just slightly disturbed.

"That's a maid outfit."

"Why do they even sell that here?" Yukiko questioned, but she kept her voice down so no one would hear.

The sparkles in Teddie's eyes were almost audible now,

"I'll try it on right away!"

"Y-You can't wear that!" Chie objected alarmed.

Teddie grinned at her, "Then you wear it, Chie-chan."

"Wait, what?"

Seeing Chie's face turn even redder than before somehow caused Teddie's grin to look even more joyous. Yukiko took a good, slightly disgusted look at the maid outfit, which was clearly designed exclusively to cater to male desires.

"'Wear it'? I think you meant to say 'bear it'," she whispered – just to start snickering at her own joke a moment later. "Hm Hm Hm…. 'Bear it'…!"

"Oh, good one, Yuki-chan! I can't bearlive I missed that one!"

Teddie bounced happily, as Yukiko's laughter turned louder and louder. Chie could only sigh,

"Good to know that at least one of us can laugh about that. Well, at least now there's really no doubt anymore that you're actually _our_ Teddie…"

"Chie-chan, you still doubted me?" Teddie's eyes turned even bigger and watery. "Oh no, my poor heart! It hasn't been in there for long, and now it's broken already!"

"P-Please just don't cry." Chie quickly pleaded when she realized how much Teddie turned up the melodrama. And then, all too sudden, his smile returned,

"I won't if you wear the pretty dress."

"Never! Not in a million years!"

Now Chie was getting angry. She had her standards and she was not going to break them, not even if that meant she'd have to put up with that guy throwing a tantrum. She wrestled the maid dress away from Teddie and hung it right back into the rack it had come from. Unfortunately, that meant that she was distracted for a moment, as was Yukiko, who was still laughing loudly. Teddie, still marveling at all the unfamiliar things around him, took the chance and ran off again.

"Oh…Oh no," Chie noticed Teddie leaving much too late. Not only were the clothes racks here stacked to each other rather tightly, Teddie – the new Teddie – wasn't exactly tall either, just barely reaching to Chie's nose, if at all. He had dived under right into the sea of women's clothing and disappeared. Now she had no idea where he was.

"Yukiko, did you see which direction he went? …Yukiko?"

Instead of a reply, Chie got Yukiko bending herself over, struggling to keep what seemed like an enormous laughter inside,

"HM HM HA HA! _B-Bear it_! Ha Ha! Can you _bear_ that, Chie? Can you?"

"I'd rather like to find the "bear" right now," Chie grabbed Yukiko's wrist and helped her get up. "C'mon. We need to split up. Who knows what he's gonna do here if we aren't the first ones to get to him."

* * *

"Say, Miss… Do you come here a lot?"

Blue eyes gazed at the young lady, whose current duty was to keep the assortment of the women's section in order. She was only a part-time worker and hadn't expected much from the job. Accordingly, this exceeded her wildest imaginations. Was she dreaming? Certainly she was. How else could it be, that such an incarnation of all things desirable was talking to her here, in the women's section, of all places? Sure, she couldn't see too much of the boy, he was fairly short and only his arms and head reached above the rack he was standing behind, but if those were any indication, she was probably talking to an incognito movie-star right now.

"O-Oh…m-me? Tee hee… I just work here…"

She giggled, her eyes darting around as she nervously rubbed her hands together.

"So you are working at the Junes-place? That's interesting!"

And the blue eyes glistened and gleamed at her, like she had just said the most informative thing in the world.

"What work do you do at the Junes-place? It must be fun."

"I-I'm just stacking the racks," she blushed. "That's all…"

"Ah, but those are so beautifully stacked racks. Hm… No wonder, if they were stacked by such a bear-utiful Miss!"

The part-time lady shifted flustered. Oh, how, just how, could a misplaced "R" sound so seductive? What kind of accent was this? French? Probably, everything sounded so seductive in French… Oh, right, right she had learned French in school, if only for a year. Maybe she should try…?

"_O-Oui… Monsieur…?"_

That was French, right? Right? It had to be…

"…_Oui, Monsieur_~!" the handsome one repeated after her after a short pause, in a tone so heart meltingly beautiful, she felt like fainting.

"_M-mon ami…!_" she gasped out, kind of, sort of, sure that that, too, was French.

"_Mon ami_~" the handsome one replied and the part time lady could feel her whole body shake in pure excitement over what was happening. If this really was a dream, no one should come and wake her up now, please. No one. Not even her boyfriend. This moment was too wonderful to not savior it.

"Mon ami!" she brought over her lips once more. "Where have you been all my life?"

"Does it matter? I am here now, bear-utiful Miss," came the reply. "But if you really need to know…"

"I do," she professed. "I want to know where you are from! Tell me, no, show me!"

Her foreign prince closed his eyes and looked pained, "Oh, but it is a dangerous, dangerous place! I could never show it you! Just thinking of you ending up there makes me feel so full of despair!"

"You come from such a dangerous place?" Her lips trembled at the thought of it.

He poured his heart to her, "Oh, yes! I was there all alone, day in, day out, just the Shadows and me. I was one very, very lonely bear!"

The stock-girl crossed her arms over her chest, "How horrible!"

"Still, it's my home. And there is so much nice about it too. I still love it there, you see." As he told her this, his voice shook with sadness. "But I can never show it to you! And, oh, that makes me so sad…!"

"Tell me more!" the girl exclaimed. "Tell me more about you!"

"You want to know more? Well…"

And the gorgeous foreigner leaned across the rack and looked at her, deeply. Sincerely. He came closer, and closer. Until…

…Until a hand of unknown origin suddenly entered the picture and dragged her prince away by his perfect, golden hair.

"Yee_eeOUCH_!"

Before the stock-girl could take in what had just happened, she found herself startled by the sudden appearance of a short-haired person she slowly recognized as one of those girls from class 2-2 that all the guys kept talking about.

Chie Satonaka was glaring at Teddie with anger and not a hint of willingness to release his hair from her grip,

"What are you doing? Seriously, you had Yukiko and me worried!"

"Uff…C-Chie-chan! Let go!" he pleaded, but was unable to suppress a certain irritation in his voice. "Can't you see I'm in the middle of important, scoring-related business?"

"The only 'business' you should be in the middle of here is clothing-related and taking place over there. In the _men's_ section," Chie hissed. "So you will leave the nice girl alone now, and go there like a good boy. _Alright_?"

"B-But…!"

Teddie looked like the world was breaking apart for him. Just what had gone wrong? He had been so close. _So close_!

The stock girl couldn't help but stare upon the scene in utter confusion.

"Sa…Satonaka-san?"

"Hm?" Chie turned and took a look at the girl with them for the first time. Much to her horror she had to realize that it was someone from their school, a girl from class 2-3, if she remembered right. Oh, shoot, given how quickly rumors spread around here, this would be all over school tomorrow morning now. She had to come up with something, _fast_.

"O-oh, oh, oh! Never mind him!" She waved her arms around in a way that was meant to be reassuring but ultimately wasn't. "H-He's just a… a friend's friend's cousin… 5th grade, trice removed… from the far land of… Teeveesylvania! Yes!"

Chie broke out into loud laughter, as if to cover up her own unpleasant realization that this had sounded even dumber than it had when she had imagined in her head. "S-So he doesn't know our customs yet! Isn't that _right_?"

Teddie was just confused. What was Chie even talking about? Maybe he just didn't get it because he was new here, but none of this made any sense whatsoever to him. Only when Chie, not too subtly, rammed her elbow into his ribs and he for the first time realized in just how many ways you can get a human body to _hurt_, he decided to just play along.

"Uhf! R-Right! Chie-chan is always right!" He squeaked, trying to add a laughter right afterwards as to not shed a tear, but it quickly turned into him mumbling barely audibly, "Uff…And Chie-chan is a cruel mistress…"

"We'll talk about this later, Casanova-Wannabe," she whispered back at him, before looking at the girl again and profoundly apologizing. "Really, REALLY sorry for this, I swear!"

Then, she yanked Teddie by his hand and dragged him away, down the hall before he had even a hint of a chance to continue where he had left off. The stock-girl did not take her very perplexed eyes off them until they were around the corner and out of sight.

* * *

Teddie found himself squeezed into a small cabin with a mirror inside and a blue curtain covering the entrance. Chie was standing in front like a guard dog, making sure he couldn't leave. He could only vaguely see her silhouette through the thick curtain, but her angry voice was clearly audible to him.

"Just what were you thinking, saying all that stuff to a stranger?" she asked with a growling tone in her voice.

Teddie pouted, despite knowing Chie couldn't see him, "Chie-chan and Yuki-chan said they didn't want to spend quality time with me, so I tried to find to find someone who wants to. Is that so wrong?"

She sighed, "It's not just that! I heard you talking. You were about to tell her about the other world, weren't you?"

"Actually, I _did_ tell her," Teddie corrected. "I just kept it vague to build up for the great finale! …But then you cut me off."

"Thank god I did!" Chie threw in. "Teddie, other people don't know your world even exists. You can't tell anyone you come from there, got it?"

This seemed to actually startle the bear-turned-boy, "What? I can't tell? But why?"

"Because we are the only ones who can go through the TV," Chie explained. "If we told anyone about it, they wouldn't believe us. And if we showed proof, they'd probably just freak out. Don't you remember what we acted like when we first met you? We were even more panicked than you were!"

To his surprise, Teddie realized that Chie-chan was right. The memory was hazy for some reason, but in the back of his mind, he could vaguely recall how pale Chie-chan had been when he first saw her and how Yosuke wouldn't stop talking doom and gloom. Sensei had had a really hard time keeping them calm back then.

So he really couldn't tell anyone about his side? His home, the Shadows, how people were getting thrown in or anything else about it? Then, what was he supposed to talk about when speaking to the people here? All he knew anything about was his world. And whatever little he knew about himself was all closely connected to that world. What if anybody asked him where he came from, like the girl just now? Did that mean he would have to make up stuff and lie? Or maybe it meant he would have to avoid talking to other people altogether? No, he didn't like that thought, he didn't want to hide away and isolate himself from all the people here. That wasn't what he came to this world for! Teddie let his head hang and sighed. Wasn't there any way he could just be like the others? Just while he was here? Maybe it was because he still had so much to learn.

Just then, the curtain moved a bit. Chie was peeking inside,

"Are you still wearing this? Ah, alright, let me explain how this will go now. As soon as I close the curtain again, you'll get out of the bottom part of that thing. I won't look inside again until you're wearing something. Yukiko's gone to fetch a few outfits for you to try on. Don't even think about leaving here before you got our personal approval, got it?!"

Teddie turned around to face his friend.

"But I wanted to pick an outfit myself," he moaned. "Chie-chan, don't be so mean. Would you really deny a poor bear his first shopping trip ever?"

An unimpressed look was what he got in return for that,

"With how you behaved over there? _Definitely_."

She didn't give him any time to retort and pulled her head out of the cabin, leaving Teddie to his own designs behind the closed curtain. Now it was just the mirror and him, so he starred into it for a while. The image was much clearer than what he had seen in his reflection in the TVs back on his side. It was still so surreal, seeing himself like that. Teddie couldn't help but tilt his head a bit and watch the mirror image do the same. Yep, still handsome. He hadn't been mistaken about that. He didn't get it. How was Chie-chan resisting his pure, childlike charms? Maybe it was a Chie-thing. '_Girls have girl-things. Chie has Chie-things.' _Teddie vaguely recalled Yosuke mentioning that once. Now he finally felt like he was beginning to understand what he had meant.

Teddie still wasn't quite sure what he should do now. Chie had said something about taking the bottom part off. Well, one leg out, second leg out, carefully putting fur aside. Tada, bottom part off. And now? He was just about to get really bored starring at his own reflection, when a familiar, fair-skinned arm reached through the curtain inside, hanging up a few clothes on the hook on the wall to his right.

"Here! You can try those on, Teddie." It was Yukiko's voice. "I tried to get things that I thought might suit you. Maybe there's something you'll like in there!"

"Yuki-chan, you're wonderful! Thank you!" Teddie called outside, glad to have been relieved of the fate of doing nothing in a cramped space so soon. Almost greedily, he pulled some of the clothes off the hook and started trying to get them onto his body.

It was a bit of a struggle; some of them used clothing mechanisms he wasn't familiar with, in fact even the motions for buttoning a shirt didn't come natural to him and he had to try around a bit until he had figured out how to do it. Even the zipper on the first set of pants he tried gave him some trouble. Of course he knew perfectly well how to work a zipper, having had one around his head all his life, but this one needed some strange "plugging in" before you could use it. After a few minutes, though, he had the first outfit on.

"How're you doing, Teddie?" he heard Chie call in.

"Just about…" he fumbled around until he had finally closed the last button on his shirt. "-Done!"

Proudly, Teddie stretched his arms away from his body and grinned. Dressed, from top to bottom, just like all the other people in this world. Now, there really was no way to tell he was any different! It fit like a second skin and kept him warm, but not too warm. He felt that he was beginning to understand the purpose of this whole 'clothing'-thing even better and that made him feel accomplished. Yet, his enthusiasm wore off quickly as he looked into the mirror for a while. He couldn't help it, something just didn't feel 'right'. What he was wearing right now just looked so very… plain. It was simple, red shirt and a set of white pants. Sure, he could see how the girls got that idea to give him that. But, still…

Teddie eyed his reflection for a bit, frowning. It was just then, that the curtain slowly opened and Yukiko and Chie took a careful look inside.

"Oh, Teddie! That looks good on you!" Yukiko sounded satisfied when Teddie turned around to face the girls. Chie, too, seemed rather relieved. "Yeah, I think that should do it. Now, that that's taken care of-"

"No."

There was a short silence and Chie took notice of Teddie's frown. It made her feel uncomfortably dumbstruck. She looked at the boy.

"Umm… Excuse me?"

"I said 'No'", Teddie repeated. "I don't wanna wear this."

"B-But, it fits, doesn't it!?"

"It does," he nodded.

"Then why not?" There was a panicky quality to Chie's voice.

"It's just not what I wanna wear!" he told her stubbornly.

"Teddie, please…!"

Before Chie could go on arguing, she felt Yukiko putting a hand on her shoulder. She shook her head, "We can't make him wear it if he doesn't want to, Chie."

"I know, but still…"

Teddie could see how Chie took a quick glance across her shoulder, at a clock at a wall nearby. They had been here for a while already, and Teddie wondered if Chie had a problem with that. He definitely didn't. This was about his first set of clothing ever, he wanted to make sure it was 100% bear-fect! Even if that meant troubling the ladies just a little. He could make up for it later. He stood there keeping the frown on his face to make it absolutely clear that he wouldn't move until they let him try on something else. Chie sighed in defeat.

"Alright… I guess you can try one, two more outfits. But please try to hurry up, OK? The guys are waiting for us down in the Shopping District!"

'Hurrying up', however, turned out to be more of an unrealistic demand than Chie would have expected, mostly because Teddie now showed a trait of himself that the girls would have never expected to find in him:

He was incredibly picky.

That shirt was too dark, these pants too short, the belt too brown, the buttons too small, the zipper too obvious, and so on and on and on… After about 30 minutes of this game, Chie was very close to swearing to herself that if she heard the word 'No' out of this cabin just once more, heads would roll. Geez, it was just clothes! How could anyone be that overly self-conscious about what they were wearing? Especially someone who'd spent his entire existence up to this point running around looking like Doraemon's long lost cousin. She was simply baffled.

Yukiko was worried by something else. As the minutes passed and Teddie kept switching in and out of outfits, the clothing they brought for him to try were getting increasingly more elaborate in design and accordingly expensive. Also, Teddie obviously was very much aware of how well-shaped that new body of his was, so he urged them to go for more form-fitting items, which meant yet more increase in price. How were they going to pay for this? She got an allowance for helping in the Inn, but she had used up quite a bit of that recently for the ingredients for her cooking attempts. And she knew for a fact that Chie had a tendency to blow the entirety of her allowance on DVDs and steak dinners in record time each month.

"Chie, can we really afford this?" Yukiko was whispering so as not to attract Teddie's attention. "I mean this is getting pretty pricey…"

"Don't worry, don't worry!" Chie calmed down her friend. "I have an absolutely foolproof plan in case that we shouldn't quite manage to cover for it."

"Foolproof…?" Yukiko repeated after her. She could only hope that by that Chie didn't mean that they'd just grab the clothing and run for it.

A voice melodic, much familiar voice from inside the cabin interrupted their conversation.

"I'm ready~!"

The curtain opened, Chie and Yukiko looked inside. What they found was their not-so-mysterious-anymore-pretty-boy, his eyes shining in satisfaction, as he posed in his latest outfit: A white, frilly shirt with a form-fitting cut and a set of black, slim pants and fitting shoes, which made a great contrast to the shirt.

"Now? What do you ladies think?" he asked, keeping his voice much clearer as he usually did and flipping his hair.

"Wow, Teddie…!" Yukiko was almost speechless, but in a different way from before. "You look like a real prince!"

That word brought a smile to Teddie's face.

"The kind of prince you would want to 'go somewhere' with?" he asked sneakily.

Whatever enthusiasm had been on Yukiko's face was instantly gone with this. She groaned a bit and averted her eyes and, again, Chie couldn't help but feel sorry for her. With a sigh, she longed for Teddie's arm, grabbed it and dragged him out of the cabin.

"W-WHOA, Ch-Chie-chan…!"

"Now that that's over with, let's get out of here!" she declared and marched away, right towards the cash desk, not giving Teddie even a moment to reconsider. He didn't dare to struggle either. What if he ended up accidentally ripping a hole into his nice, new shirt? That would be a catastrophe! He spent so long finding just the best possible one!

Yukiko, now carrying Teddie's 'fur' –which turned out to be surprisingly light for what it looked like – was coming after them in the most dignified way one could possibly follow a girl dragging a younger boy dressed like a prince behind her, while carrying a bear-mascot costume.

She was right behind Chie when the cashier read out the total price of the outfit Teddie had picked himself and it caused her to feel a big lump in her throat and swallow heavily. How, just how, was Chie planning to pay for this? It was then, however, that Yukiko's old friend revealed her "foolproof" idea:

A little thing she liked to call "_Plan H for Hanamura_".

"That guy and us, you see, we're really good friends of Yosuke Hanamura. You know, the manager's son? So yeah, he sent us to go shopping with the little guy in his stead, because he was busy. It's his birthday, you know! That guy's, I mean, not Yosuke's."

Chie smiled when she was explaining this to the lady behind the counter. Technically, not a word of it was a lie. She was just twisting it all in a way that would certainly save both, Yukiko and herself, from sudden bankruptcy. The lady blinked a bit.

"Friends of Yosuke-kun? Hm, oh yes, I think I've seen you around with him. You're down at the food-court a lot, right? And I think he has brought you in to help out a few times before as well…"

"Yes, yes, that's exactly it!" Chie nodded immediately. "You see, Yosuke really, really wanted to get the little guy clothes here for his birthday. But because of the circumstances, he can't be here himself now. I know, it's unusual and I swear, Yosuke will definitely not let this become a habit, but could you please, please, just once let us charge to his account, even if Yosuke's not here himself?"

Chie was begging with the best puppy-dog eyes she could muster, which Teddie, however, found a bit pathetic in comparison. Was this supposed to look pleading? Hah, he should show her how to do 'pleading'! Big, blue, watery eyes were gazing at the lady behind the counter in a sympathy-drawing way.

"Pleeeeease." he repeated after Chie with long, drawn out vowels and the lady behind the counter began to shift in her seat uncomfortable.

"Well… if that's really what Yosuke-kun wanted…" she replied hesitantly. "I mean, he _is_ the boss' son… Maybe, I could make an exception just this once..."

And with that, Chie's and Teddie's faces brightened up immediately.

"Please do! Yosuke is going to appreciate it!" Chie claimed.

"Beary much, in fact!" Teddie nodded.

"I don't know about that…" Yukiko sighed, but she kept her voice down. This _was_ their only choice, after all.

The cashier lady seemed to be drawn back and forth between allowing it and not allowing it for a short while, but, finally, the power of Chie's smile and Teddie's impossibly cute pout conquered her doubt. She gave a short nod.

"Alright. But tell Yosuke-kun to make sure his father doesn't hear of this, alright? Otherwise, we'll both be in trouble!"

"We promise!" Chie declared and Teddie raised his hand above his head,

"Bear Swear!"

* * *

One bleeping register later, Teddie was official owner of his first set of human clothing and Yosuke Hanamura several thousand Yen poorer. With that out of the way, there was only one more stop for the three of them to reach before their first – and in Chie's opinion hopefully last for a long while – shared shopping trip would officially end; the Drug Store in the Inaba Shopping District.

"You know… Yosuke-kun is really not going to be happy about this, Chie," Yukiko remarked on the way through town.

"He'll survive it," Chie claimed. "It's still better than having to remove Teddie from the store by force because he refuses to get dressed, right? I doubt he'd have liked to explain a naked, bawling boy who somehow knows his names blocking the dressing rooms."

Yukiko sighed, "I know, but still, it just doesn't feel right…"

"Hm… Not right… Not right…" Teddie was mumbling to himself as he went with the girls, playfully skipping every third step he took. He'd gotten pretty dexterous with this body already and wasn't at risk of tripping. "Right, right… Something's still not right!"

"Hm? What do you mean?" Yukiko asked, turning to him.

"My clothing!" Teddie declared, pounding his fist into his other palm. "Something is still missing!"

"Well, you are not going back to change, forget it!" Chie quickly shouted, ready to step in-between if Teddie should decide to turn for Junes again. However, fortunately, that never happened.

Instead, Teddie took a look down himself, then around.

"It's not bad, just still a bit, umm, well, bland?" he smiled. "It still needs a finishing touch! Something like…"

There was a pause and Teddie said nothing else, just looked around. Finally, he spotted something that attracted his attention.

"Aha!"

And then, for the third time this day, Teddie dashed off without a warning. Chie didn't manage to grab him before he did, however, there was also no need to call for him. He didn't run far. Just across the street from them, he halted. Right in front of a small rosebush, peeking through an iron fence. By the time the girls got to him, he had bent over the bush.

Teddie gazed at the red blossoms before him, fascinated. Those were roses, right? He didn't know why he knew that, but he knew. Maybe he had seen such flowers before, somewhere, in his world. That was very possible. They did seem pretty familiar. And still, no matter where he might have seen them before, he was sure that they seemed even prettier out here. Everything seemed so much prettier in the light of this world. Chie-chan, Yuki-chan, the streets and the sky… And probably these flowers too. He held out his nose and took a breath to inhale the fragrance of the blossoms. Even their smell was beautiful.

"Ugh! Could you stop it with the running away, already?" Chie put a hand on his shoulder to make him turn around. "Seriously, Teddie."

But Teddie didn't reply to her scolding. Instead, he stood up from where he was bent over and turned around. Proudly, he placed himself in front of the girls. There was a rose blossom tucked into what should have been his breast pocket, a single red spot in the otherwise completely black and white outfit.

"_Now_ it is perfect!" Teddie said with a sense of accomplishment.

Chie opened her mouth to object, but quickly realized she wasn't exactly in the position to call anyone out on theft right now, may it just be flower theft.

"Oh well. At least this doesn't cost us extra," she decided.

Meanwhile, Yukiko could only silently wonder if 'perfect' was something different from 'bear-fect' now.


	4. Inaba by Sunlight

_This fic might not be all that popular, but I really enjoy writing it now and then, so I decided to upload a bit more. Even if noone ends up reading it, it's still nice to put up my work and hope for reactions by people. Sides, there's not enough Teddie-related Fanfics by far._

* * *

Teddie was still not entirely sure what Chie had done when she 'charged to Yosuke's account'. Whatever it was, though, it apparently meant that Chie-chan and Yuki-chan wouldn't have to pay for his clothing, which was sort of a relief for him. In all his excitement, he had totally forgotten that people needed money to buy stuff. Money, like, the coins defeated Shadows sometimes dropped, right? Teddie had seen Sensei carefully collecting and stowing away the coins many times before and while he didn't really have a sense of how much they were worth, it gave him the feeling that these coins were really important and valuable. He didn't really know how much the outfit he had chosen had cost, but if Yosuke could make it so that he wouldn't have to pay for it, that was good, right? It was actually kind of amazing that Yosuke could let them do something like this. And he found it even more amazing when Yosuke pulled out a money bill with quite a few zeros on it, for Kanji to share with Teddie. He would have never thought that their Yosuke had so much money! The Junes place must be something like a fountain of coins and bills! No wonder Yosuke lived there, it sounded like a very useful place to be.

However, apparently Yosuke thought a bit differently about it. Because as soon as Chie mentioned the whole 'charging' thing, the two of them fell into one of these squabbles Teddie was just all too used to from them. Teddie couldn't help but notice that, no matter if in his world or in theirs, the way his friends acted didn't change too much. Same couldn't go for him though apparently, as Chie took another chance to remind Teddie that he would have to behave himself. He still didn't know what exactly this would have to encompass here, but at least Chie-chan and Yuki-chan didn't seem to be mad with him anymore. That was a relief. Yosuke, however, was another story. Because whatever exactly this 'charging'-thing had done, apparently it meant Yosuke had lost a lot of money himself. And he was not happy about that.

"You listen here, Ted," he started, glaring down at an intimidated Teddie, who had just been trying to lighten the mood with a quick joke. "You better take really, really, REALLY good care of that. If you put even a single tear in it, I'll make your next set of clothes out of the bear hide you took off!"

Teddie made the mental note to never try joking with an angry Yosuke and nodded his head so wildly, he was afraid it'd come off for a second there, before shrinking away and covering his ears with his hands. Hopefully, Yosuke wasn't actually serious about that. He didn't want clothes made from his fur. He was planning on keeping his fur. It'd feel scary if it was suddenly gone. Fortunately for Teddie – but not fortunately for everyone else – Yosuke didn't get to yell at him further, because that was when Chie stepped in and decided to give another two of her own cents. That was enough to distract the "Prince of Junes" from the young boy who was wearing what was once supposed to be his motorcycle-savings, and refocus his rage on Chie Satonaka, who had enough fire and side remarks in her spirit to counter it. That gave Teddie a moment to breathe.

"Yo Teddie, don't let it get you down," It was Kanji, who, much to Teddie's surprise, came over and made an attempt to cheer him up. He waved the bill with the many zeroes that he had gotten from Yosuke in his hand. "Let's go get some Topsicles. "

That was something you didn't need to tell Teddie twice. Everything to just get away from Yosuke and Chie-chan as they were right now. Skipping over to Kanji as quickly as he could, Teddie quickly waved at Sensei, who took a short moment to wave back before going back to staring at Chie-chan's and Yosuke's bickering with Yuki-chan like on-lookers to a trainwreck. Teddie himself didn't feel like witnessing the wreckage any longer, though. He followed Kanji inside the building with a sign reading "Drugstore" above its door. This same door also blocked out the sound of Yosuke and Chie's arguing voices surprisingly well as soon as it was closed behind them. Teddie was relieved. He took a short breath, than looked around a bit.

The room they had entered was a store, much smaller than Junes in size, but with the shelves stocked to the ceiling. There were a lot of familiar and unfamiliar smells that Teddie couldn't all quite name or even tell apart and sunshine coming through the small windows fought for dominance with the few electric lights on the ceiling. The clerk tending to the cash desk was an older woman, smiling warmly at the two boys when they entered.

"Huh? Back already, Kanji-kun? My, my, let me guess, you want more ice cream?"

"Yeah, and some for that guy too," Kanji nodded at the lady as he led Teddie up to the counter. "He's got some celebratin' to do."

Teddie's eyes were still darting around curiously, as he couldn't stop wondering what all the things in this store might be for. He recognized a lot of them as items he knew from his own world, but others were completely alien. He didn't take notice of it right away when the lady spoke to him.

"Oh my, a face I don't know. Are you new here, little boy?"

"Umm…" Teddie's reaction came plenty delayed, but when it came, he tried to make up for it by immediately focusing on the clerk lady and nodding widely.

"O…Oh, yeah! I come from-" he quickly stopped himself, remembering Chie's warning. "Emm… I mean… I'm just visiting here."

That was true and did the job of answering the question very well. The lady smiled calmly,

"Ah, you are a friend of Kanji-kun then? That is so nice. Until recently, he didn't used to be seen around here with friends a lot, you see."

"He didn't?" Teddie asked surprised, wondering why that might be.

Only then the battle with Kanji's Shadow – an episode that had been so strangely unpleasant of an experience for him and his fur that he had tried to ignore it really hard – came back to him. Right… Kanji had had some sorts of trouble with getting along with other people, didn't he? Especially girls, apparently. Teddie was so used to seeing him with Sensei and the others, he didn't think of that too often. Kanji himself apparently didn't really want to think about it either, because when Teddie glanced up to the tall boy, his face was red and his eyes shifted away from the counter. He looked very uncomfortable.

"Yeah, yeah, 'aight… Anyway, topsicles. Same as usual for me, please."

"Of course," the lady nodded, undisturbed by Kanji's reaction, and bent down to fetch the treats for him. As she did so, Kanji turned to Teddie.

"And? What'll you have?"

"Huh?" Teddie looked at Kanji puzzled. He didn't really know what he was asking.

"Topsicles," Kanji repeated. "What flavor?"

"Oh… I dunno," tilting his head a bit, Teddie thought about it. "I've never had topsicles before. Does the flavor make a lot of difference?"

"Seriously, man?" Kanji's eyes were wide. "Never before, at all? Woah, you've been missing out… I'll tell you what, you'll just have what I'm having and if that's not doing it for ya, we'll try something else. Yosuke-senpai's given us plenty of cash, after all."

"Sounds good. OK, let's do that then!" Teddie nodded. "…But what flavor are you having anyway, Kanji?"

The tall boy was already receiving the treats from the lady when Teddie said this, so he couldn't just reply, he could demonstrate: There were two blue bars of ice cream on sticks in his hands, one in each.

"Blue Berry Flavor," he declared, before handing Teddie one of the tTpsicles. "Here ya go!"

Teddie grinned,

"Blue Beary, huh? I already like the sound of that!"

That said, Teddie gratefully accepted the blue, cold bar and started licking away.

* * *

"Woah, slow down there, Teddie! You'll get brain freeze like that."

"Don't be silly Kanji. The ice is going to my belly, it won't make my head freeze!" Teddie declared merrily in-between bites and licks, leaning against the outside wall of the drug store. He was chomping down the Topsicle – his third already – at such an insane speed, even Kanji couldn't help but stare. "And my Persona is resistant against ice. So even if the cold gets really unbearable, I won't freeze!"

"Oh, sort of like Chie-Senpai's? I didn't know that. Well that's useful and stuff, I guess."

Useful it sure was, Teddie didn't deny that. After all, without that ability of his, he'd probably have frozen to death several times over when he was stumbling through the cold fog without his precious fur in his world. …Actually, that reminded him of something.

"Kanji?" Teddie looked up from his Ice Cream for a short bit. "What's '_catching the cold_' mean?"

"Hm? You don't know that?" Kanji replied.

Teddie shook his head, "Yosuke mentioned it once, but I don't really get it. How can you catch the cold? I mean, it's cold. It goes wherever it can go, right?"

"It's not that kinda 'cold', y'know…" Kanji seemed to be thinking hard about how to explain that. "It's, like, when you get sick… With your nose running and stuff. Happens a lot when you don't keep yourself warm when it's cold, that's why it's called that."

"Getting sick, huh?" Teddie went back to licking on his Topsicle, lost in thought. "I've never been sick before. It's really unpleasant, right? …A-And people can even die from it!"

"Not from a cold, man," Kanji was actually laughing. "Worst case, you're out for a few days. It's really nothing that bad. What'cha really want to watch out for is the real dangerous stuff, but you don't catch those easily, so don't worry."

"So, there's different kinds of sicknesses. I see…"

Teddie was a bit annoyed with himself again. Why did he know what Ice Cream was, but not what kind of different flavors there were? Why did he know what getting sick meant, when he didn't even know what kind of sicknesses there were and had never even gotten sick himself before? He felt like his knowledge was full of holes and gaps, but having empty holes in him, well, that was nothing new to him. Then again, he had managed to 'fill' that 'hole' too, right? So why not try to fill these other ones as well? All he had to do for it was to learn about the stuff he didn't know.

He stepped out of the shade of the drugstore, back into the hot summer sun, in order to get a better look at his surroundings. Teddie wanted to take in and memorize as much of them as possible. Maybe he would come up with a new question or two he could ask too. The more he learned, the better. He still wasn't used to the bright sunlight, but the ice did a great job cooling him down and his outfit was lofty enough for the weather too, making him feel he chose it well. Taking a look up and down the street they were on, Teddie finally realized that he knew this place from somewhere. It took him a few seconds to realize that, yes, there was a street that looked just like this one, over, on his side…

"These buildings… Oh, I remembear now! " Something lit up in Teddie's mind. "Chie-chan mentioned that. This is the Shopping District..."

Right, the Shopping District. This was that place, the one he had gone to with Sensei and Yosuke when he met them for the second time. Where Yosuke was attacked by his Shadow. Or at least, there was a version of this place where all this happened, over, in his world. So, what he was seeing right now was probably the real thing then, the original. Of course, he hadn't recognized the place right away, because the "Shopping District" that had appeared over on his side was a dark, gloomy place crawling with Shadows. This place, however, was bright and colorful. The difference between his own world and this one had never been smacked more obviously into Teddie's face than right now.

"You like it? I grew up 'round these parts," he heard Kanji's voice say. Teddie turned to the other boy and Kanji pointed the hand he was holding his Topsicle with up the street. "You seein' that old store with the dark roof, over there? That's my house. And Rise's is just a bit further down the road, on the other side."

Teddie followed where Kanji was pointing and nodded in interest, getting the locations committed to memory.

"And… all the way down the street, there's a liquor store, right?" he asked, before lowering his head a bit. "That's where that second girl who died lived, right? The one Yosuke liked."

Kanji seemed quite surprised to hear that, "Hm? How'd you know that? …Oh, right, there's some weird-ass copy of this place over on your side, right? I heard Senpai mumble 'bout that…"

Teddie nodded, realizing that the group had never gone back to that place over in his world again after Kanji joined. There had just been no reason to. They did some minor investigations there after Chie and Yukiko had become members of the team, but since Sensei didn't find much of interest there, they decided there wasn't much use going back there again. Especially seeing how Yosuke really, really didn't like being there.

"So… Yosuke-senpai had a thing for Konishi-senpai, huh?" Kanji asked, like that was something that had never crossed his mind before Teddie mentioned it, despite Yosuke talking about that girl a lot.

"I think so," Teddie replied. "He took it really hard when her Shadow's voice said that she hated him…"

"Oh man. That sucks big time. Now I get why that whole case's so important to Yosuke-senpai," Kanji took a bite out his Ice Cream, swallowed it down and went back to licking normally. "But, then again, the case's really important to all of us. I mean, if we don't catch that bastard who does it, anyone 'round here could be the next to be done in, right? And for you, there's the whole thing with Shadows going berserk in your home whenever it's happening…"

"Y-Yeah…" Teddie nodded half-heartedly, because suddenly, he felt like he was realizing how small his problem was compared to those of the others. He had always been able to just avoid the Shadows after all. It wasn't like his life had ever been in any danger. His friends always had the lives of loved ones on stake when it had happened. Had he really been so insistent about catching the killer to Sensei and Yosuke, just because he wanted some peace and quiet? Suddenly, he felt so very shallow…

"Hey, Teddie. Don't look so down. Your ice's melting."

"Oh," Kanji's attempt to cheer him up brought Teddie back out of his thoughts. He quickly went back to licking his treat and enjoying it. The glorious sweetness immediately made everything better. Teddie took another look up and down the street before turning to Kanji once more for another question.

"Which of the houses is Sensei's?"

"Senpai's? He doesn't live 'round here, I don't think," Kanji replied. "He's stayin' with his uncle and lil' cousin over in the Living Districts."

"Living Districts…" Teddie repeated the name of a place he had never heard about. "How big is this world?"

Kanji laughed, "You ain't seen nothing yet, Teddie. Junes and this Shopping District're just a small part of Inaba. And Inaba… well, that's not even a speck of dust on the big world map. This world's way too big for anyone to ever see all of it, y'know."

"N-Not even a speck of dust?" Teddie's eyes widened. His sense of scale couldn't deal with that. He was truly o-bear-whelmed. "You are really living in such a gigantic world? That's amazing!"

Excited, Teddie bounced around, trying to see past the houses and catch a glimpse of how far this world extends to the horizon, but there weren't only houses, but also some mountains in the way. Was it really as big as Kanji claimed? He wanted to see, but apparently, that wouldn't quite happen yet. When Teddie turned around a bit disappointed, he saw that Kanji was having that weirdly unfitting grin on his face that he always gave when he couldn't help but find something cute or pretty. Teddie didn't usually like that grin, because it tended to mean Kanji was about to try and touch his fur, but for once, he didn't really mind, because his fur was in safety. Yuki-chan had neatly stored it away in a plastic bag she had with her.

"Wow, Chie-senpai sure wasn't kidding when she said everything's exciting for you. How 'bout a tour? Could show you some of the stores."

"Through the Shopping District?" Teddie asked, his eyes shining. "I'm in! But not without snacks. I want one more Topsicle first."

Strangely proudly, the shorter blonde presented the stick of his finished ice cream to Kanji, causing him to laugh,

"'Aight, 'aight! That'll make four for you then. Hey, you're catching up on me!"

* * *

It was a short tour, seeing how the Shopping District wasn't exactly huge, but Teddie enjoyed it nonetheless. Despite the whole place having the exact same layout as the copy created from Saki's emotions that he knew from his side, it was still different in many ways, most notably that this place actually had life in it, and was in fact actually very lively. It wasn't as crowded as some parts of Junes, but there were still plenty of people walking around the street, more than enough to make Teddie realize that his first assumption of how populated this world was must have been way off. He was slowly starting to comprehend the scales of everything here and that his friends, despite already being a quite sizable group in his eyes, were only a microscopic fraction of all of Inaba's population. And yet, people here seemed to all know each other, given how they were greeting and talking. Even Kanji, who showed him the ropes and explained the functions of the different stores to him, got greeted by a few people Teddie had, of course, never met before on the way.

Unlike Chie and Yukiko, Kanji didn't exactly put a leash on Teddie and so he could roam fairly freely and check everything out as he wanted to. Kanji was rather fast on his feet himself and had no problem keeping up with the smaller boy anyway. Teddie would have sort of preferred if he couldn't, though, since the two times he attempted to talk to passer-by school girls, they ran as soon as his friend approached from behind in all his muscle packed glory, before Teddie could lay on any moves onto the girls whatsoever. Note to the bear himself: Make sure to keep Kanji at 100 meter distance when trying to talk to girls from now on.

Time passed, the sun in the sky moved, people were met, places examined and Teddie's fourth Topsicle eaten. They were back at Shiroku Drug Store by that point, just in time for Teddie to demand another portion of ice cream. Kanji passed; with six bars of Blue Berry Topsicles he had fulfilled his daily need for sweet. It was only the fifth for Teddie, he hadn't quite managed to catch up with Kanji after all. Maybe he should have stopped after the fourth one, because when Teddie and Kanji wanted to go meet up with Sensei and the others, who had been talking to Rise, Kanji was informed via his cellphone that the group had gathered at the shrine in the district; a Topsicle-free zone. Teddie could argue as much as he wanted, he was made to wait at the gates, when Kanji went to join the others and Rise. It was just him and his ice cream bar then, in front of the shrine in silence, as Teddie watched the sun sink closer to the mountains and wondered what made the sky of this world so brilliantly blue. He had learned a lot today already. Maybe he would learn about that too one day.

* * *

It had been Yuki-chan and Chie-chan who went shopping with him. It had been Kanji who showed him around the Shopping District and ate Topsicles with him. The one to take him back home was Yosuke. That's what he said he was going to do when he emerged from the gates to the shrine and picked up Teddie from there, at least.

"We're going back? Already?" Teddie wasn't even trying to hide the disappointment in his voice, but Yosuke, who was now carrying Yukiko's plastic bag with Teddie's suit in it, still managed to ignore it.

"Yeah, since it's getting kind of late. You and I have the same way home… well, sort of. So we decided I'm gonna take you back to your side for the day. You coming?"

"Umm…Alright, but…" Teddie was a bit reluctant, but before he knew it, Yosuke had already walked off. Surprised, he quickly ran after him. He didn't know if he'd remember the way back to Junes all by himself and even though he could always try to sniff out Yosuke's scent, he didn't want to risk his nose failing him and then being stuck out here in a place he didn't know too well all night without his fur. Especially since this world became darker when it changed from day to night. A little tidbit he had noticed as soon as the sun had started to vanish behind the mountains.

Teddie walked after Yosuke for a while, silently. He didn't know why they were being silent. Maybe it was just that they didn't exactly have anything to talk about. Maybe it was because Yosuke seemed a bit worn out. Well, it had been a hot and long day. Regardless of what the reason for the silence was, though, Teddie didn't like it. It was odd, because it was silent most of the time over on his side, but maybe that was just why he couldn't stand it right now. When he was with his friends, he wanted there to be at least a little bit of noise. Even if it was just Yosuke. Talking about noise, Yosuke was wearing those headphones of his again… Ohh, so that was why he wasn't talking! Teddie crossed his arms. Geez, this made him feel insulted. It was grizzly manners to listen to music when people are talking to you! Well, he wasn't really talking to Yosuke, but what if he wanted to? In fact, that was just what he was gonna do now.

"Hey, Yosuke! Yooosuke!" Teddie called out, but, predictably, Yosuke gave no answer. His headphones were really blocking out everything, huh? Teddie was thinking of just running off so Yosuke would be forced to search him, just to spite him. But on the other hand, he didn't want to make anybody worry for him, so he decided against it. He tried again, louder. "Yoooosuke! Bear to Yosuke! I'm talking to you!"

It was when Yosuke stopped walking for a moment and raised his head that Teddie knew he had finally heard him. Yosuke turned around and took off his headphones.

"Something wrong, Ted?" he asked.

Teddie pouted, "Yes, there is. You're ignoring me."

"What?" Yosuke was visibly confused. "Dude, you weren't talking up till just now, it's not ignoring when you've done nothing to notice!"

"But it's my first time out here! There's got to be something for you to notice about me!" Teddie argued stubbornly.

Yosuke, who had now continued to walk, but was keeping his headphones down, seemed a bit annoyed,

"Yeah. I notice that you're really that same obnoxious guy you always were, even if you look like some kid out of those afternoon soaps my Mom watches now. …Man, this is still so weird."

Teddie tilted his head and followed after Yosuke.

"Weird? How?"

"Well, for a start, you've now got a human body. Which you apparently grew right into that bear-suit of yours. Which you, just by the way, _never told us you could do_."

"I didn't tell you I could do it, because I didn't know I could!" Teddie threw right back. "Duh!"

"You… didn't even know?" Yosuke asked baffled. "Seriously? First you take out Rise's Shadow in one blow, despite telling us over and over that you suck at fighting, and now that! What _do_ you even know about yourself?"

Teddie walked a bit slower. His head was starting to hang.

"I know…that I'm Teddie," he replied, sounding meeker than he had meant to sound.

The changed tone in his voice didn't go unnoticed by Yosuke, who was overcome by a small wave of guilt when he heard it. He halted in his tracks, waiting until Teddie had caught up with him. Then he sighed,

"I'm sorry, Ted. I know, it's not your fault. I… kinda crossed a line there."

The two of them were walking side by side now, Yosuke looking down to Teddie, whose arms were no longer crossed now, but he was still walking rather slowly.

"But you're right, Yosuke. I _am_ weird," Teddie said, sounding a little desperate. "I don't know where I came from or what I am… I… I just wonder what I'd be doing if you guys had never come."

"You'd probably still be sitting on the other side by yourself, wondering where the people who get thrown in come from and getting all worked up about it. And we would be over here, having absolutely no way to stop it from happening," Yosuke suggested, before winking at Teddie. "See? In the end, everything worked out for the best for all of us!"

"But we still haven't caught the killer. And you said they got someone else the other day," Teddie replied disheartened. "If the killer's not throwing people over to my side anymore, that means we will have to track him down over here now. And I know nothing about this world. I don't even think my nose works all too well here. I won't be of any use…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, don't go beating yourself up now, alright? You're going to make me feel bad!" Yosuke shook his head a bit and rolled his eyes. "You think we'd have gotten anywhere close to where we're now if it hadn't been for you and all the weird stuff you pulled? And now, c'mon, cheer up. You making that face with… _that face _just hurts to see._"_

Slowly Teddie raised his head and straightened his back again. He walked a bit quicker.

"Hey, Yosuke?" he started. "Is it really that hard to bearlieve that I'm me when I'm this way? Chie-chan kept saying that too."

Yosuke closed his eyes for a moment,

"Oh well, we've come across far more bizarre stuff already, so it's not like it was anything we really couldn't believe or something. I guess for me it's just that I've seen your insides before, when you were still empty. That pretty much cemented for me that that bear… suit… _thing_ actually _is_ you. Seeing you walk around as an actual normal person is just gonna take some getting used to… Kinda ironic, if you think about it."

"Ironic?" Teddie asked, as if he had no clue what Yosuke meant. So he explained,

"Well, when we first met you, that was actually the way I expected you were gonna be like, you know. What you're like right now, I mean."

"Oh! I get it! That's why you took off my head, right? And then you wouldn't stop going on and on about me being empty…"

Teddie sounded a bit sore when saying the last sentence. Enough to have the remains of the earlier wave of guilt tickle Yosuke a bit again,

"Yeah… Sorry about that. You were just freakin' me out, you know? And, to be honest, you still kind of are, but in a waaaay different way." Yosuke sighed. "Oh man. '_Teddie, the boy who came from the bear.'_ I'm gonna have a hard time convincing myself I didn't just dream that up when I get up tomorrow morning. Then again, I thought the same thing when we first met you and look at where we're now… Oh, hey. We're there."

The two of them had just reached the gates of Junes when Yosuke said that. The large building with the now brightly lit sign stating the store's name was only separated from them by the entrance yard, which was currently being flocked by people.

"Everyone's leaving, huh," Teddie noticed, when he realized that all the people in the yard were coming their direction.

"Yeah, because it's just about closing time," Yosuke nodded. "Which is good for us, 'cause it means there's likely not going to be anyone bothering us when you get back into the TV."

Looking around a bit, then checking on the contents of the bag he was carrying, Yosuke tugged Teddie's hand a bit, "C'mon, I'm gonna show you the bathrooms, so you can change back. You can probably leave on the stuff you're wearing right now under your usual thing… Just, please, please don't make them magically disappear into a black hole in there or something."

* * *

Right back in front of the TV. Right where he started. Teddie stared into the truly majestically large TV and his own image stared back. He had gotten back into his fur now, just as Yosuke had told him to, the clothes Chie-chan and Yuki-chan had bought him still on his body. Of course, he didn't feel the difference. As he was now, he couldn't feel that anything was inside, much less that 'it' was wearing clothing. It was almost as if his pretty new insides really weren't there unless he brought them out.

Teddie was strange. He knew Yosuke hadn't been wrong about that. He had found himself strange ever since he had started to thinking about himself. And, even though he hadn't been to this world for long, he could already tell that he was even stranger by his friends' standards. Even if he could summon a Persona like they could, or could make himself look like they look when he wanted to. In the end, that didn't change anything about how strange he was.

"Well, there we are, Ted," Yosuke was standing besides Teddie, hands at his hips, watching out for people passing by. He said other people might get scared if they saw anyone enter the TV. Given what Chie-Chan had told him this made sense and Teddie didn't question it.

"Yeah… there we are," Teddie nodded, but his mind wasn't really in it. He kept staring at the screen.

_(If I go through this, I'll be back on my side. Where I belong…)_ he thought.

"You know, it really shocked me at first, but, hey. It was nice having you over," he heard Yosuke tell him. "So, feel free to drop by now and then if you feel like it. Take care and… see you around."

Yosuke then stepped aside just a bit, as if to give Teddie space to move. Teddie, however, stayed where he was, like entranced by his reflection on the screen. He wouldn't budge.

"Umm… Ted?"

What was wrong? Yosuke was beginning to get worried. Was something off with the TV? Teddie knew more about the other world than all of them combined could ever hope to know. If he saw anything strange enough with the entrance to not go through, that was a problem. Still, maybe the little guy was just tired. He had just recently faced his Shadow after all, and had now been on his feet all day, bouncing around more than Yosuke had ever seen him do so before. Plus, that whole '_He's now got a human body_' thing. Who knew how that affected him? Yosuke decided to give Teddie a bit more time to act. Except Teddie didn't. Even after half a minute more of pointless staring, he wouldn't move an inch. Yosuke was starting to get impatient.

"OK, seriously, Teddie. Everything alright?" He tapped his foot on the floor. "How much longer are you gonna stare at that thing?"

Finally, Teddie moved a bit, in that he slightly turned to the highschooler and scoffed,

"Sheesh, Yosuke! Can't you see I'm thinking?"

"Thinking? About what?" Yosuke sighed. Why couldn't things ever be easy with this bear? "Listen, the store's going to be closed in fifteen minutes. If you don't go through now, we'll have to leave and then you won't be able to get back home until tomorrow!"

"…Good."

And for a moment there, Yosuke wasn't sure he had heard right.

"Emm… What?"

"I said that that's '_Good'_," Teddie said, now completely turning in Yosuke's direction. He was smiling again. "Just now, I was delibearating to myself about reasons to go back home. I couldn't come up with any. So, I think I'll just stay."

Allowing for a few seconds of break between Teddie's words and his response, just to let them settle so he could fully process them, Yosuke stared down at the mascot-being to his feet in sheer fascinated disbelieve. He wasn't… he _couldn't_ be serious about this. Could he?

"…Excuse me? Teddie, you can't 'just stay'! You can't!"

"Why not?" Teddie replied, ever so slightly aggravated. He started to pout. "It's not like I'm talking about forever. Just for… a little bit. I love my world, but right now it's cold, and foggy, and there's Shadows everywhere and it's so unbearably, horribly lonely! And look!"

As if to give Yosuke no chance to refute what he was saying, Teddie quickly grabbed behind his own head, pulled the zipper and removed the upper half of his fur. By now, the shift was occurring so smoothly, he barely noticed it. Using his other face, he grinned at Yosuke.

"I have this now! Like this, there should be no problems if I stay here, right?"

"Ted, it doesn't work like that!" Yosuke tried to look strict. "You've got nowhere to stay! Where are you gonna sleep? How are you gonna explain even being _there_? There's certain things you need in our world! A homeless, parentless kid with no known identity is not going to fare well around here!"

Teddie decided to ignore the 'no identity' part for now, though it made him want to kick Yosuke for some reason. Instead, he decided to focus on what he thought were the more relevant problems,

"I can explain myself! Chie-chan and I could come up with excuses earlier just fine! And… I can find a place to stay too. Everything's better than the floor over there…"

While saying this, Teddie moved his hand and pointed at the screen that he had turned away from. Yosuke threw a quick glance at it and then he understood. He stayed silent for a bit before voicing his realization.

"…You've… never slept in an actual bed before, huh?"

Teddie was gazing at the floor, looking as cute and deserving of sympathy as he could. Still, Yosuke felt that a lot of it was genuine, not just Teddie trying to make him feel sorry for him. Not sure what to say, Yosuke scratched the back of his head,

"I don't know… I could see if I can let you stay at my place for a night or something, but… Well, I don't usually have sleepovers. Especially not with kids notably younger than me. Mom and Dad will probably get suspicious. And even if I did that, it'd only be for one night! There's no way I could keep you in our house for longer without my parents noticing anything odd."

"Pleeeease, Yosuke! Just for a little while?" Teddie was basically begging now. "There has to be something you can do! I mean… how couldn't there be? I mean, after all, aren't you the 'Master of Junes'? Oh, please, Yosuke! No, Yosuke-_senpai_!"

"…Laying on a little thick today, aren't we?" Yosuke wasn't sure whether to groan or sigh. "But seriously, I don't know, Ted. As much as I wish I could help you there, I just can't think of any way you could possibly-"

Fate is a fickle thing. And as just this fate wanted it, just that same moment, a voice from behind interrupted Yosuke by calling his name.

"Oh! Yosuke-kun! And Eddie-san is here too! What a coincidence."

Now, usually Teddie would have corrected such butchery committed on his pretty name, but the speaker turned out to be an equally pretty lady, so he decided to let his good manners play instead.

"Good Evening, Miss!" he greeted, bowing a bit. The young lady seemed positively surprised.

"Ah, so it really is you, Eddie-san! Oh, excuse me, I wasn't really sure until I heard your voice. I only assumed it because I saw you're still wearing part of the costume. Hm, so that's what you look like under it…Huh, I am surprised. I judged you as much shorter!"

Staying silent for now, Teddie just put on his nicest smile and nodded, as Yosuke stepped up to the lady,

"Oh… Yurishiro-san, good evening. Anything you needed from me?"

The young lady – Miss Yurishiro – turned to Yosuke and seemed quite excited, "I just wanted to tell you that the promotion was a full success! This was probably the best thing to happen to Junes in a long time. Congratulations on this amazing idea!"

"Eh? A Promotion? What are you talking about?" Yosuke ended up staring at her like she was speaking in cryptic riddles. She smiled and explained,

"The new mascot, of course!" Yurishiro made a motion towards Teddie. "It was you who hired him, right? I have to say, I was unsure about it myself in the beginning, but apparently, the children really love it! Several costumers stated that their children insisted to come back so they could see the cute bear again and, well, it seems we are going to have quite a few new regulars now."

"C-Cute bear…?" Yosuke didn't trust his ears.

"They really want to see me again…?" Teddie didn't trust his either, but for slightly different reasons. His eyes were big and he seemed exited.

Yurishiro smiled and nodded.

"You did a wonderful job, Eddie-san. Please, consider applying for a permanent position, alright? Otherwise, all those children would be really disappointed. Oh, also, don't worry about recommendation. I already spoke to Hanamura-san about Yosuke-kun's and your amazing efforts." She put a hand on Teddie's shoulder and winked, "Welcome to Junes!"

Then she turned and left again, leaving behind a speechless Yosuke and a very happy Teddie, who could just bearly keep himself from bouncing up and down where he stood. Finally, he looked at Yosuke, full expectation.

"Did I just score with that lady?" he asked euphorically.

"I… wouldn't say it like that, but," Yosuke's voice was a monotone of disbelief as he blankly stared into the air. "But …you're still _ungodly_ lucky."


End file.
